NLV Mid Term Review (2014)

Mid-Term Review (July 2012 - December 2013)

No Longer Vulnerable program (July 2012 - July 2015)

www.oxfam.org.au

Executive summary

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Introduction and purpose

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Approach, methodology, limitations and validity

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Approach

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Methodology

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Limitations

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Validity

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Background analysis of No Longer Vulnerable

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Context and objectives

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Theory of change

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Theory of action to address vulnerability

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Progress against objectives

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Integration as a way of working

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Gender

Active citizenship

Improved health outcomes

Report structure

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Water, sanitation and hygiene

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Food and livelihoods

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Access to rights and social protection

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Disaster risk reduction

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The development of key concepts: vulnerability

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The use of the adapted integral framework

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Key lessons and recommendations

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Program design

Program implementation

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Reaching program objectives

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Recommendations

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Concluding Comment

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References

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Appendix: No Longer Vulnerable Mid-Term Review: Summary of Findings and Recommendations

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AIDS Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome CBO Community-Based Organisation CLA

Cluster Level Association

CSO

Civil Society Organisation

DDR Disaster Risk Reduction ECD

Early Childhood Development

FSG

Farmer Support Group

HAPG HIV and AIDS Prevention Group HIV

Human Immunodeficiency Virus

JAW Justice and Women JCAS Joint Country Analysis Strategy LGBTI Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Intersex NDP National Development Plan NGO Non-Governmental Organisation PACSA Pietermaritzburg Agency for Community Social Action PE

Project Empower

OAU Oxfam Australia OVSA OneVoice South Africa SHG Self Help Group STI

Sexually Transmitted Infection

TAC

Treatment Action Campaign

TB

Tuberculosis

UNICEF United Nations Children’s Fund WASH Water, Sanitation and Hygiene WFP Women on Farms Project

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Introduction and purpose Oxfam Australia’s country program in South Africa, located in Durban, KwaZulu-Natal, promotes and supports an integrated programming approach. Civil society organisations (CSOs) supported by Oxfam Australia (OAU) deliver programs that improve health outcomes relating to HIV and AIDS, tuberculosis (TB) and water-related infections and diseases, increase and sustain food security and livelihoods options, and increase and uphold access to social protection and socio-economic rights. The No Longer Vulnerable Integrated Program was initiated in July 2012 with forty-four partners across the KwaZulu-Natal, Limpopo, Eastern Cape and Western Cape provinces.

The mid-term review was commissioned to ensure that careful reflection and analysis across a broad range of projects and partners could help OAU take stock of how the program was unfolding and to strengthen its implementation. The review focused on three broad questions: 1.

2.

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Has the program progressed towards the intended objectives? What have been the major learnings emerging from the work implemented thus far? What areas of focus are emerging and what does this mean in terms of the strategy’s objectives?

As this program was intended as an integrated approach targeting vulnerability, how well has the program responded to this factor? Based on the work done thus far, has the program addressed vulnerability (as a focus) and, if not, what can be done going forward using vulnerability as the measure?

The framework has been aligned to Rao and Kelleher’s ‘integral framework’ as the base of the theory of change. How has this theory been internalised and used by program staff? A combination of methods was used to undertake the review including ensuring familiarity with the underlying theory of change, a comprehensive review of program documentation, consultation and dialogue with program staff and partner

organisations through key informant interviews and roundtable discussions, and an assessment of other literature pertaining to the development context in South Africa. The major limitation of the study is that it was a review and not an evaluation. As such, some of the emerging analysis cannot be seen as having been part of a rigorous, scientific research process. Nonetheless, the findings and subsequent recommendations

were validated through continuous process of corroboration through the key informant interviews, roundtable discussions and informal discussions with senior staff at OAU.

Background analysis of No Longer Vulnerable

In order to achieve the overarching vision of the program of “less vulnerable people living and working in South Africa” particularly within the communities in which OAU partners work, two crosscutting issues were identified. Firstly, the programs undertaken would employ comprehensive power analyses that promote women’s leadership; work towards a broad awareness and promotion of women’s rights; and address the gendered impact of HIV, food security and climate change on women. Secondly, active citizenship would be promoted, in which the broader population of the country would be enabled to hold duty bearers to account for the delivery of quality social services.

Facilitating change depends on working in multiple spheres. An explicit recognition of this is made in the ‘theory of change’, which draws on Rao and Kelleher’s integral framework, and lies at the heart of the No Longer Vulnerable program. The framework explicitly identifies where these changes must occur, ranging from cultural and institutional systems to changes at an individual level in terms of people’s attitudes and beliefs, or their access to and control over resources.

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According to OAU staff, the implementation of the program builds on the organisation’s ‘theory of action’ that has emerged over time: strengthen CSOs, through their work empower communities, and through them change society. In thinking critically about how this could be achieved, OAU staff identified variants of the mechanisms inherent in specific programs as being key to the change process. This entailed leveraging different resources (money, time, skills, networks, partnerships, and issue knowledge) to enable partners to work with and within the communities they served and to which they belonged.

Concepts of learning, innovation and self-organisation are at the core of how OAU understands change happens.

The allocation of resources enables partners to empower communities to lead the change, supported by learning, reflection, innovation and organisation. Four critical factors, which interact across temporal and spatial scales, are crucial to enabling change to happen: •

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Learning to live with change and uncertainty. Making memory more of a focus of strategic discussions with communities will further strengthen the identification and mobilisation of “internal” resources that communities have in addressing vulnerability.

Nurturing diversity in its various forms. Identifying the diversity that exists in a community and ensuring a multiplicity of voices and experiences further strengthens an approach to build on “what is already in place”.

Combining different types of knowledge for learning. Recognising the complementarity of different knowledge systems and establishing cross-scale platforms for dialogues are important for stimulating learning and innovation. This includes within OAU itself.

Creating opportunity for self-organisation and cross-scale linkages. Another key strategy of OAU is to link partner organisations across scales to build a comprehensive approach to addressing vulnerability. Applying this directly to the integral framework will help identify strategic linkages to elicit change.

A key finding is that OAU is consistent in communicating with organisations and in the way it behaves towards them. Training, methodology, dissemination of information and dialogue are important features of OAU’s contribution to the growth and development of partners. OAU’s tools and processes lead to an understanding of issues that change norms and values.

Progress against objectives An assessment of progress against program objectives helped identify the major learning emerging from the work. The following statement was reviewed against program documentation and through focus group discussions: “CSOs supported by OAU deliver programs that improve health outcomes relating to HIV and AIDS, TB and water-related infections and diseases, increase and sustain food security and livelihoods options available to households, and increase and uphold access to social protection and socio-economic rights.” The following distils the main findings.

Integration as a way of working

In practice integration means addressing multiple, overlapping issues facing communities. The fluidity of social vulnerability in South Africa challenges conventional development programming that focuses on one main issue. Vulnerability and marginalisation seldom adhere to strict program boundaries. Under more rigid programming, opportunities to create substantive change often go unrealised, as these fall between the “silos” of differentiated programs, leaving limited options to capitalise on opportunities to consolidate learning and apply them across platforms.

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There are a number of examples where “integration” is happening across OAU’s work. A striking point about such activities is that they are often emerging from the grassroots through careful community facilitation, social dialogue, diagnosis and learning. The multiple, overlapping issues facing communities cannot be addressed through silos. This might be a starting point for future programming.

The approach has also created opportunities at grassroots level for “integration” to be tested in different ways, mostly emerging from an iterative approach as projects unfold. An emerging opportunity is for conscious reflection amongst OAU staff to interrogate and reflect on these experiences more critically to derive a set of principles that might inform future work. As a learning organisation, OAU has established institutional arrangements at local level that stimulate experimentation, adaptation and learning.

Another strength of No Longer Vulnerable is the diversity of partner organisations. This diversity includes ideological basis. Apart from bringing in new skills and approaches that contribute to the integration of programming, it also creates new alliances and positive tensions.

The integrated approach allows partners to “identify the links” between factors underpinning social vulnerability and to prioritise these according to what particular beneficiaries articulate. This empowers partners, and, in turn, their beneficiaries and affected communities, to begin engaging the structural underpinnings of vulnerability such as holding local government to account for non delivery and poor services.

Active citizenship

Examples of how active citizenship has facilitated change, often on a small-scale, but usually to effect, can be found throughout the partner reports. These range from social dialogue and building accountability within communities to high-level advocacy campaigns. Having a multi-pronged approach that can be targeted at national level or within a particular community has proven effective. OAU has a clear role to make this more explicit in its strategy to link organisations across a particular issue.

Another opportunity is to strengthen the national civil society platform Awethu! to build solidarity in confronting development challenges in South Africa. This is to partly address the fragmented nature of many civil society attempts to hold the state and private sector to account in the country. Several partners referred to OAU’s convening power to pull organisations together in this regard.

An important reflection is that people are busy simply trying to survive in a very challenging environment. There is not enough space for debate and dialogue. OAU therefore needs to support different ways of creating dialogue within communities to build civil society.

Gender No Longer Vulnerable has a strong gender analysis. Work has been done internally with staff and externally with partners and other groups to develop the skills to recognise and respond to the need to place women more centrally as both actors in development and as primary beneficiaries of OAU’s work. This reflects the abiding concern of the program that unless the structural roots of vulnerability are addressed, any change may be temporary and illusionary.

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Apart from illustrating the diversity of approaches in the gender work supported under No Longer Vulnerable, this has also demonstrated a vulnerability context characterised by increasing poverty and inequality, but also gender inequalities and discrimination that are reinforced by socio-economic inequality. Clearly the objective goal to narrow inequalities as essential gendered work and to provide women with the spaces, not only to bring their own solutions, but also to make their own choices and build solidarity, is pivotal for the ongoing work of the program.

Gender work is largely embedded throughout OAU’s work. The important learning that women’s empowerment is often the key to addressing vulnerability seems to be increasingly recognised across programming from water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH), food and nutrition security, and smallholder farming to disaster risk reduction and accessing services.

The overarching strategy to empower women is through their participation in groups that build community solidarity to address social issues. Group interaction including sharing information builds trust and establishes alliances. It also develops the confidence of groups of women as their knowledge and experience can be validated.

Attention is required to simultaneously address discrimination and improve women’s social and economic position through income generation, capacity building and household food security. Although women face a common multi-dimensionality of discrimination and vulnerability, there seems to be different forms of discrimination in the urban and rural context. This became explicit in the farmwomen work and the experiences with self-help groups. A nuanced approach to specificity and location is often required.

Embracing contestation

Given the prevalence of contestation in South Africa – whether between communities and the state or within communities themselves – it is imperative that development practice engages with conflict and contestation as a means through which to address vulnerability. OAU has created participatory spaces to enable communities to express disagreements, contest power and outcomes, and reach decisions. If structured in a manner that expands dialogue and enables the emergence of new solutions, contestation can contribute to building the strength of a community. Understanding the role of contestation in planning processes leads to a better understanding of how to develop people’s capacity to build resilience through collective action.

Embracing community complexity

Development planning has a tendency to romanticise the coherence of communities and, in so doing, underestimate their complexity. This failure to recognise complexity often leads to inappropriate interventions and blowback from ‘beneficiaries’, as the needs of communities are not adequately addressed. OAU programs, especially those in the urban context, have embraced this. Experiences of how to do this should be an explicit learning across the organisation.

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Health outcomes

A challenge facing partners working with health issues is “local public health services seem to be deteriorating every day” with “no treatment available for infectious diseases, no vaccines for children and no antibiotics”. The overarching question emerging is how to effectively engage the public health system.

A two-pronged strategy is emerging from partner’s work: to establish and demonstrate an effective system while simultaneously mobilising people and building partnerships to demand from government structures an adequate and functioning service at district and local level. A key message is that there is little chance of the government establishing a developmental state – for which the hallmark is effective bureaucracy – unless internal change occurs to define meeting the needs of the people as the central strategy for overcoming the apartheid legacy.

Two important experiences, which provide an invaluable look at the health system in South Africa and how OAU can help address a dysfunctional system, have emerged. Reflecting on the experiences of Bela Bela and Treatment Action Campaign (TAC), it is clear that the strategy should pivot on mobilising people to demand from provincial structures an adequate and functioning service at district and local level. Bela Bela has demonstrated how effective and focused operations with better leadership and management can achieve quality health services. TAC has a proven track record of working both outside and with government to bring about change. The two entities provide an important opportunity to consolidate OAU’s overarching strategy to elicit change in the health sector.

WASH

WASH training has been integrated with a range of issues, all concretised and made explicit through interactive sessions. Water safety issues were merged with topics such as sanitation and hygiene, HIV and AIDS, gender and disability. In reviewing what people had learned, there was clear interest and uptake amongst the participants particularly on topics of water safety and gender.

An understanding emerging across partners is that WASH and HIV-related services, in particular, should be integrated for increased impact. Partners have emerging models for the successful integration of these two focus areas. A central strategy has been to support learners with a greater understanding of hygiene and sanitation and its link to the disease burden such as HIV and other sexual and reproductive health and rights issues. Another opportunity exists with linking WASH with food and nutrition security, as exemplified in the work of the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and others.

A key lesson emerging from this experience is that training on a specific issue can be used to identify a range of matters that require integration, if the challenges facing communities are to be addressed. This is the case particularly if the training was informed by community participation.

Food and livelihoods

Through the integration of food security work with WASH, livelihoods work, HIV and disaster risk reduction, partners have developed a stronger understanding of the interconnectedness of systems and processes, which has maximised the impact of their work on development-related issues.

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A challenge experienced by several partners focused primarily on food security work has been how to effectively engage with different levels of government as there is little control over the terms of engagement. An opportunity may be to mobilise farmer associations to themselves advocate for the support government often fails to provide. Opportunities may exist with the emerging policy on farmer support and extension and with linkages with broader OAU affiliates and strategy on food sovereignty.

There is an opportunity in more explicit consciousness-raising in connection with livelihood work. Bringing people together to explore questions such as ‘why is our situation like this?’ and ‘what is our capacity to create change?’ can create more holistic strategies for addressing vulnerability.

In terms of taking the food security agenda forward, an opportunity exists to challenge assumptions within the National Development Plan (NDP), which has become the overarching development agenda for government.

The NDP identifies agriculture as a primary economic activity in rural areas with the potential to create one million new jobs by 2030. However, Chapter 6 of the NDP, although not explicit, is geared towards largescale irrigation farming, fuel-based mechanisation, mono cropping, and export-oriented and agro-chemical industrial agriculture. In other words, the needs and priorities of small-scale farmers, especially women, are not emphasised; instead, the current industrialised, neoliberal, market-based model is preferred.

Access to rights/social protection

Partners implemented increasingly complex strategies for campaigning around rights, advocating for justice and advancing the voices of minorities. These transcended different levels from national level processes such as the Traditional Courts Bill to attending ward committee meetings. Also more generally in terms of engaging government (across spheres) with varying degrees of success – from national level campaigns (TAC) to local economic development (Farmer Support Group).

Partner’s engagement of local politicians such as ward councillors often serves as an initial link between communities and local government. Risks exist that the issues raised may become politicised in a ‘party politics’ manner. Nonetheless, mobilised communities that hold local officials to account for the quality of service delivery see increased results in service quality to their communities.

Linking the section on active citizenry with access to rights, the notion that citizens are not passive users of public services but active holders of fundamental rights can be strengthened. Many non-governmental organisations (NGOs) operating in South Africa have developed and used social accountability mechanisms over the years including, for example, Pietermaritzburg Agency for Community Social Action (PACSA). The monitoring of service delivery by active, community-based civil society can be strengthened by such mechanisms and the question arises whether No Longer Vulnerable can harness such opportunities to strengthen the rights program.

A key question therefore is whether there is a role for more social accountability mechanisms in OAU’s work.

Disaster risk reduction

Disaster risk reduction (DRR) has provided an opportunity to explore urban work particularly in the inner city and informal settlements, with an emphasis on safer spaces for vulnerable groups in communities of young women and refugees. DRR has aligned strongly with work with women and refugee communities to address a range of

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rights issues, including DRR, and the rights to access water and sanitation. Consciousness-raising meetings have contributed to raising awareness about DRR as a rights issue. Local experiences and interpretations of this type of work have challenged international presumptions about what is DRR work.

In many ways the DRR program exemplifies the notion of integration to address vulnerability, as rights-based initiatives have influenced and engaged more direct developmental processes to respond to community needs.

Working with particular notions of vulnerability in refugee communities and with women in informal settlements, DRR has provided new opportunities to push the boundaries of disaster preparedness and risk reduction.

The DRR program has influenced broader, regional work in re-thinking more traditional concepts associated with disasters. People migrating into urban areas are often forced to set up homes in shacks in marginal areas where there are few essential services, and they are extremely vulnerable to the impact of floods and fire. Finding community-based structures to acknowledge this and to advocate for government responses, the DRR program has reiterated the need to look beyond just the provision of facilities and support services to the physical environment and highlighted women-specific risks.

The development of key concepts: vulnerability

Unanticipated events, political change, personnel moves, physical and technological shifts, inter-program and intra-program interactions, practitioner learning, media coverage, organisational imperatives, performance management innovations and so on make programs permeable. The broadness of the thematic areas, and the nature of how OAU works in practice, means that there is flexibility and adaptability to address this reality. It also means that OAU is able to use this fluidity as an opportunity.

The notion of social vulnerability emerges as key to OAU’s work and is valuable for two reasons. First, it allows for an appreciation that shocks and stresses are not necessarily (exclusively) environmental in nature but can also be the result of changes in the social, economic or political environment, such as illness, death, loss of employment or political conflict. Secondly, and more importantly perhaps, it recognises that vulnerability is the sum total of factors in the socio-cultural, natural, physical, economic and political environment. In other words, it is multi-dimensional.

There has been some debate within OAU about the notion of resilience and whether No Longer Vulnerable is working towards this as an end result of programming. The idea is alluring, suggesting an ability to ‘bounce back’ from adversity and, possibly even achieve a state that is better than the original one, prior to the misfortune. There is, however, a danger in using the term uncritically, particularly if its interpretation is devoid of an understanding of power, agency and responsibility. Resilience theory fails to take adequate account of systemic factors that result in social vulnerability and undermine resilience, particularly how power, ecology and development intersect.

The use of the adapted integral framework

As seen from the complex context in which OAU works, facilitating change depends on working across multiple spheres. An explicit recognition of this is made in the theory of change that lies at the heart of No Longer Vulnerable. This draws on Rao and Kelleher’s integral framework (2005), which pivots on four quadrants:

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individuals within communities (rights holders) holding local government (duty bearers) to account; improved access to services; effectiveness of governance through strengthened connection between rights holders and duty bearers; and reduced inequalities through access of better services.

Although staff and partners intuitively recognise the integral framework, it is mostly not an explicit part of programming. Many partners believe a more conscious use of the framework would strengthen strategy. In particular, it can be used to identify what is missing to elicit change and what is in our power to change. In instances where partners’ work does not coherently address the lower right quadrant (formal institutions – laws, policies and networks), partnerships can be established with advocacy and policy organisations. Similarly, a more explicit focus on the lower left quadrant can be used to emphasise a focus on gender and women’s empowerment. Essentially the framework helps view the whole system in which people are embedded. By working only in one sphere of this system, change will not be achieved.

Recommendations

There are a number of recommendations that can be made from this review.

Integration An emerging opportunity is for conscious reflection amongst OAU staff to interrogate and reflect on the grassroots experiences of “integration” more critically to derive a set of principles that might inform future work.

Social mobilisation

Having a multi-pronged approach that can be targeted at national level or within a particular community has proven effective. OAU should make this more explicit in their strategy to link organisations across a particular issue.

Strengthen the national civil society platform Awethu! to build solidarity in confronting development challenges in South Africa. This is to partly address the fragmented nature of many civil society attempts to hold the state and private sector to account in the country.

Gender

There continues to be a strong need to place women more centrally as both actors in development and as primary beneficiaries of OAU’s work. This reflects the abiding concern of the program that any change may be temporary and illusionary unless the structural roots of vulnerability are addressed.

Although women face a common multi-dimensionality of discrimination and vulnerability, there seem to be different forms of discrimination in the urban and rural context. This implies that a nuanced approach to specificity and location is often required.

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Health A two-pronged strategy is recommended to establish and demonstrate an effective system while simultaneously mobilising people and building partnerships to demand from government structures an adequate and functioning service at district and local level.

WASH Training should continue to be integrated with a range of issues, all concretised and made explicit through interactive sessions, as this is proving to be an effective mechanism to address vulnerability in a holistic manner.

WASH itself has an “integrative� function.

Food security and livelihoods

A key recommendation is to review and potentially challenge assumptions within the NDP, which has become the overarching development agenda for government.

A challenge experienced by several partners focused primarily on food security work has been how to effectively engage with the different levels of government as there is little control over the terms of engagement. A recommendation is to explicitly mobilise farmer associations to advocate themselves for the support government often fails to provide.

Access to rights and social protection

The monitoring of service delivery by active, community-based civil society can be strengthened by social accountability mechanisms. The question arises whether No Longer Vulnerable can harness such opportunities to strengthen the rights program.

Disaster risk reduction

In many ways the DRR program exemplifies the notion of integration to address vulnerability as rights-based initiatives have influenced and engaged more direct developmental processes to respond to community needs. A key recommendation is to consolidate and build new opportunities to push the boundaries of disaster preparedness and risk reduction.

Vulnerability as a concept

At the end of the program OAU should prepare and publish a paper focused on what has been learnt about the notion of vulnerability. This will be a key learning as well as an important resource more generally.

Integral framework

A key recommendation is for OAU to raise awareness of the integral framework both internally and amongst partners as a more explicit part of programming and strategy development.

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Oxfam Australia’s country program in South Africa, located in Durban, KwaZulu-Natal, promotes and supports an integrated programming approach. This has been pioneered as a new and effective way to enable positive change for the people with whom the organisation works. The approach intends to ensure that people have access to the broadest range of services and support that they need at the shortest possible distance to where they live and work. Civil society organisations (CSOs) supported by Oxfam Australia (OAU) deliver programs that improve health outcomes relating to HIV and AIDS, tuberculosis (TB) and water-related infections and diseases, increase and sustain food security and livelihoods options available to households, and increase and uphold access to social protection and socio-economic rights.

The No Longer Vulnerable Integrated Program was initiated in July 2012 with forty-four partners across the KwaZulu-Natal, Limpopo, Eastern Cape and Western Cape provinces. Twenty-seven of these organisations are based in KwaZulu-Natal. Eighteen months into the program a mid-term review was commissioned to ensure that careful reflection and analysis across a broad range of projects and partners could help OAU take stock of how the program was unfolding and to strengthen its implementation. This report reflects the key issues and findings that emerged from a process of document review, consultation, engagement and deliberation. The No Longer Vulnerable Program Framework, July 2012 – June 2015, has guided the review, which also considered the strategic choices, theory of change, and aims and objectives of the strategy. The review has focused on three broad aspects:

1. Has the program progressed towards the intended objectives? What have been the major learnings emerging from the work implemented thus far? What areas of focus are emerging and what does this mean in terms of the strategy’s objectives?

2. As this program was intended as an integrated approach targeting vulnerability, how well has the program responded to this factor? Based on the work done thus far, has the program addressed vulnerability (as a focus) and, if not, what can be done going forward using vulnerability as the measure?

3. The framework has been aligned to Rao and Kelleher’s ‘integral framework’ as the basis of the theory of change. How has this theory been internalised and used by program staff?

Based on these, five objectives were defined:

1. To assess how the program has progressed towards the intended objectives; 2. To assess if the integrated approach has achieved the intended outcomes through using vulnerability as a measure in programming; 3. To assess how the framework has progressed towards the Rao and Kelleher’s integral framework as the basis for the theory of change – and to internally review how the framework has been used during implementation; 4. To assess how the partners’ work has contributed towards the progress of the objectives and integrated framework; and 5. To provide recommendations to address any issues identified for the remainder of the No Longer Vulnerable Integrated Program to improve future delivery.

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Report structure

The report is structured as follows.

• The first section introduces the study, outlines the guiding questions and provides an overview of the research methodology.

• The second section outlines the approach of the mid-term review including the conceptual approach, methodology, limitations and validity.

• The third section provides a background analysis of the No Longer Vulnerable program by focusing on its key objectives, which were designed to respond to pertinent contextual challenges. These provide the basis on which to reflect on the impact.

• The fourth section considers the progress against the program objectives and provides a reflection on the relevance, effectiveness, efficiency and sustainability of the integrated approach. In particular, it identifies the major learning emerging from the work implemented thus far and discusses evolving areas of focus, considering what this means in terms of the objectives.

• The fifth section provides an interrogation and analysis of the key concepts underpinning the program: vulnerability and integrated programming.

• The sixth section focuses on the use of the adapted integral framework both in terms of an analytical tool and as a practical method for day-to-day programming. This section links back to some discussion under section four.

• The final section draws the review together through an elaboration of key learning and recommendations for No Longer Vulnerable.

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The following section outlines the approach of the mid-term review including the conceptual approach, methodology, limitations and validity of the review.

Approach

The review took into consideration the findings of the formative evaluation undertaken at the beginning of the strategy and linked it to the meta-analysis of the program documentation. As such, the formative evaluation and document review were used to develop an analytical approach, which was used to test the theory of change that OAU described for the No Longer Vulnerable framework. This theory of change defines how the program expected change to happen within a given context. A combination of methods was used to do this including ensuring familiarity with the underlying theory of change and its basis, a comprehensive review of program documentation, consultation and dialogue with program staff and partner organisations through key informant interviews and roundtable discussions, and an assessment of other literature pertaining to the development context in South Africa. These methods are detailed below.

Methodology

Information for this review was collected using a combination of methods including appraisal of secondary material and a range of consultations through key informant interviews and focus group discussions. An overview of some key development debates in South Africa gave a broader perspective in which to interrogate this information. This approach was designed to promote mutual learning and reflection as the reviewer, and OAU staff and partners jointly interrogated the framework. The reviewer took detailed notes during the meetings, which provided the primary information for the review. All of the material was collated to produce a response to the five objectives of the review.

The scope of the work was broken down into three phases. Phase one was a meta-analysis consisting of a desk review of all the documents that have been produced over the past eighteen months including three No Longer Vulnerable program reports, all forty-four partner reports, publications, case studies, workshop reports, and research pieces. The meta-analysis focused on the three areas identified above and, as such, enabled the study to identify key issues that required further interrogation under phases two and three. The results from the metaanalysis were presented to the OAU team and a joint exercise, which included identifying which partners would be involved in the review, enabled the final design of phase three.

Phase two was an internal review of the theory of change. This consisted of interactive discussions and interviews with program staff and management in order to reflect on the use and benefits of the integral framework developed by Rao and Kelleher. This is central to the underlying theory of change. The review assessed the views of staff on this approach, its benefits and emerging lessons. The discussions and interviews were conducted in person or via Skype.

Phase three was an external review of the integrated approach involving interactive discussions with a selection of representatives of partners on the benefits, lessons and challenges of the integrated program approach.

The selection of partner organisations was informed by the desk review and consultation with OAU staff under

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phases one and two and fed into a larger workshop with partner organisations to elicit feedback and broader discussion. The reports pertaining to these meetings were also used as a key resource along with the notes taken by the reviewer. The three phases were used to complete the final report, which was both internally and externally reviewed and then finalised.

Limitations

The major limitation of the study is that it is a review and not an evaluation. As such, some of the emerging analysis cannot be seen as having been part of a rigorous, scientific research process. The analysis and recommendations are subject to potential bias emerging from the author’s own personal viewpoints, gaps in the literature that may have emerged in the initial consolidation of material and in what was pursued in terms of secondary material and errors in the translation of data from the primary research to the summarisation in the review.

Nonetheless, the findings and subsequent recommendations were validated through a continuous process of corroboration through key informant interviews, roundtable discussions and informal discussions with senior staff at OAU. The methodology was designed to provide a sequence of activities that allowed for identification of themes and issues and to corroborate emerging findings in a consultative manner. Some limitations in the findings and recommendations were partly addressed by two appraisals by past OAU program staff. As discussed below, care was taken to ensure that the findings were validated.

Validity

Apart from validating findings through the phased approach and ongoing interactions with staff and partners, questions were asked throughout the review about whether the basic plan emerging from the theory of change was sound, plausible, durable, practical and, above all, valid. In so doing, the underlying theory of change of the framework was verified and tested.

Validity of findings and recommendations was also safeguarded through careful sampling across the review. The meta-analysis drew on a review of all program documentation produced by OAU and partners over the eighteen month period and leading into the initiation of the program. As such, it is argued that a comprehensive sample of documentation provided the material for this review. In terms of the two facilitated discussions conducted with OAU staff, most program coordinators and senior management attended to ensure that all major themes were discussed. Efforts were made to engage all participants in these discussions and to draw out opinions and impressions about key issues. Individual interviews and discussions were held with some staff members around specific questions.

Similarly, two roundtable discussions were undertaken with partner organisations, including representatives of senior staff who were involved in decisions around the implementation of No Longer Vulnerable. The discussions were conducted in such a way as to enable participants to engage with each other and to collectively pursue particular themes or issues based on guiding questions. The opinions of the participants can therefore be seen as a credible reflection of the work and views of partner organisations. The partners invited to these discussions spanned all the major themes and focus areas that the program was designed to address.

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This section provides a background analysis of the No Longer Vulnerable Integrated Program by focusing on its key objectives as they relate to the context of South Africa and a strategy, or ‘theory of action’, required to address vulnerability. This analysis provides the basis on which to reflect on the impact of the program in the subsequent section.

Context and objectives

The framework document identified four most critical and relevant contextual challenges:

• Increasing vulnerability of individuals and communities (to a range of entwined shocks and stressors) largely as a result of high levels of unemployment and poverty in South Africa; • Poor health outcomes compounded by the AIDS epidemic, high levels of poverty, poor administration and a lack of human resources (characterising a failing health system); • Increasing vulnerability of communities to climatic and social shocks; and • A lack of accountability on the part of duty bearers for the delivery of social services.

The overarching vision of the program was “less vulnerable people living and working in South Africa” particularly within the communities in which OAU partners worked, as a result of its effective implementation. In order to achieve this, three main objectives were identified for the program. Essentially CSOs would be supported by OAU in South Africa to deliver programs that:

1. Improved health outcomes relating to HIV and AIDS, TB and water-related infections and diseases; 2. Increased and sustained food security and livelihoods options would be available to households; 3. Increased and upheld access to social protection/rights.

Two crosscutting issues were identified that would be crucial for attaining these objectives. Firstly, the programs undertaken would employ comprehensive power analyses that promote women’s leadership; work towards a broad awareness and promotion of women’s rights; and address the gendered impact of HIV, food security and climate change on women. Secondly, active citizenship, in which the broader population of the country would be enabled to hold duty bearers to account for the delivery of quality social services, would be promoted. Rather than framing these as advocacy activities, the program would reflect its impact under the broad category of work called influencing.

Theory of change

As seen from the complex context and objectives, facilitating change will depend on working in multiple spheres.

An explicit recognition of this is made in the theory of change that lies at the heart of No Longer Vulnerable, which draws on Rao and Kelleher’s integral framework. The framework explicitly identifies where these changes must occur, ranging from cultural and institutional systems to changes at an individual level in terms of people’s attitudes and beliefs, or their access to and control over resources. Each of these is presented as a quadrant of a whole that should be considered holistically. The framework document provides an example of applying the theory of change using the quadrants: individuals within communities (rights holders) holding local government (duty bearers) to account; improved access to services; effectiveness of governance through strengthened connection between rights holders and duty bearers; and reduced inequalities through access of better services.

The integral framework is considered in greater depth in section five of this review, after the assessment of the implementation of the program.

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Theory of action to address vulnerability

The No Longer Vulnerable Program posits that in order for development to occur and to be sustained, CSOs have to be supported to develop community development approaches that are high quality, strategic, adaptive and responsive to immediate community needs while all of the time remaining focused on long-term gains.

According to OAU staff, the implementation of the program builds on the organisation’s theory of action that had emerged over time: strengthen CSOs, through their work empower communities, and through them change society. In thinking critically about how this could be achieved, OAU staff identified variants of the mechanisms inherent in specific programs as being key to the change process facilitated by themselves. This entailed leveraging different resources (money, time, skills, networks, partnerships, and issue knowledge) to enable partners to work with and within the communities they served and to which they belonged. Five main ‘mechanisms’ were identified through which support would be provided to partners to reach the vision of “less vulnerable people living and working in South Africa”. These mechanisms were to:

1. Provide program funding to support the partner organisation’s ongoing work; 2. Design and deliver capacity building programs that improve skills, knowledge and technical competency of partner staff; 3. Commission and disseminate contextually relevant research; 4. Create opportunities for networking and linkages with other like-minded organisations nationally and internationally; and 5. Document and disseminate partner and beneficiary experiences and learning.

Through these mechanisms, the role of OAU would continue to be about working with and strengthening the capacity of civil society to respond to development issues through the empowerment of civil society, through implementation of development initiatives, and through holding government accountable. In reviewing project documents and through discussions with staff from partner organisations, a number of practical steps were confirmed to characterise the approach:

• Step One: listen to partner needs and identify how to respond.

• Step Two: leverage funding, partnerships, networks and technical skills to implement an appropriate response.

• Step Three: secure entry points into communities using existing partnerships, where trust and durability in relationships had been built.

• Step Four: allocate required resources (skills, money, networks, partnerships, and issue knowledge) to partners based on an analysis of partner strengths and weaknesses.

• Step Five: adopt an integrated approach to partner and community needs, leveraging a range of resources to deal holistically with challenges. Part of the strategy was to acknowledge challenges and to turn these into opportunities (for example, building capacity to provide ‘added value’ in partner organisations).

• Step Six: strengthen symbiotic relationship between partners, as well as with OAU, to allow peer learning and review as well as the leveraging of partnership strengths.

• Step Seven: adopt an ongoing, innovative learning approach to allow for trial and error in meeting challenges.

Each of these steps might vary and may not unfold in sequence but the general approach has been similar across partner work. They reveal the plausible mechanisms through which the program framework operates.

In reflecting on how No Longer Vulnerable has worked in practice, the meta-analysis and the roundtable discussions confirmed that this approach was very much in place eighteen months into implementation. These practical steps should be highlighted with OAU staff during the remainder of the program to ascertain whether they can be replicated for future programming.

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Concepts of learning, innovation and self-organisation are clearly at the core of how OAU understands change to happen. The allocation of resources enables partners to empower communities to lead the change, supported by learning, reflection, innovation and organisation. It is useful to draw on Folke (2006) when considering these concepts more explicitly as a core component of the theory of action. Four critical factors, which interact across temporal and spatial scales, stand out and are crucial to enabling change to happen: 1.

2.

Learning to live with change and uncertainty. Emphasis is placed on the importance of social memory, to learn from past events and enable system renewal. Apart from underpinning identity, memory is of fundamental importance as a reservoir of experience that can be adapted to meet new situations. A number of partners routinely facilitate a process to draw on the experiences of communities when thinking about how to address vulnerability. Some partners do this explicitly through methods such as community dialogue.

Making memory a more explicit focus of these strategic discussions and broadening it out across all partners will strengthen the identification and mobilisation of the ‘internal’resources that communities possess.

Nurturing diversity in its various forms. Diversity in relation to ecology, economy, livelihoods and actors is critical for renewal, and diversification is an important strategy to reduce risks in the face of mounting vulnerability. This emerges from thinking about the resilience of ecological systems, where the term first

emerged. Identifying the diversity that exists within a place or community and ensuring a multiplicity of voices and shared experiences would strengthen an approach that builds on ‘what is already in place’.

3. Combining different types of knowledge for learning. Recognising the complementarity of different knowledge systems (including local, situated knowledge systems) and establishing cross-scale platforms for dialogues is important for stimulating learning and innovation. OAU has explicitly recognised and brought in an approach to learning platforms. This was deeply valued by partner organisations as the sharing not only provided important ideas and insights but contributed to a sense of solidarity, sometimes desperately needed in a context where challenges from time to time seemed insurmountable.

4. Creating opportunity for self-organisation and cross-scale linkages. Renewal and re-organisation contributes to the creation of new opportunities, with some of the key aspects being social organisation, community- based management, multi-level partnerships and nurturing learning organisations. This also resonates with another key strategy of OAU: to link partner organisations across scales to build a more comprehensive approach to addressing vulnerability. For example, a local community-based organisation (CBO) focused on accessing health services in an under-resourced and non-accountable system would benefit from a link to a national-level advocacy group working to hold the national government to account in the provision of the right to health.

Although these four factors can be identified across OAU’s work, making them explicit in the theory of action would strengthen the overall approach to addressing vulnerability.

At the core of No Longer Vulnerable, an integrated programming approach is thus informed by the theory of change and guided by the theory of action. This helps ensure that the people with which OAU and its partners worked have access to the broadest range of services and support that they need at the shortest possible distance to where they live and work. No Longer Vulnerable has not prescribed a particular model for the delivery of these integrated programs but rather promoted a holistic understanding of the interrelatedness of the stressors impacting on communities.

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This section provides an assessment of progress against program objectives and a reflection on the relevance, effectiveness, efficiency and sustainability of the integrated approach. In particular, it identifies the major learning emerging from the work implemented thus far and discusses evolving areas of focus, considering what this means in terms of the objectives. In essence, the following statement was reviewed against program documentation and through focus group discussions: “CSOs supported by OAU deliver programs that improve health outcomes relating to HIV and AIDS, TB and water-related infections and diseases, increase and sustain food security and livelihoods options available to households, and increase and uphold access to social protection and socio-economic rights.”

Integration as a way of working

In practice integration means addressing multiple, overlapping issues facing communities. The fluidity of social vulnerability in contemporary South Africa challenges conventional development programming that focuses on or prioritises one main issue. Vulnerability and marginalisation seldom adhere to strict, program boundaries.

Under more rigid programming, opportunities to create substantive change often goes unrealised, as these fall between the ‘silos’ of differentiated programs, leaving limited options to capitalise on opportunities to consolidate learning and apply them across platforms.

In OAU’s first year report on No Longer Vulnerable, the authors noted that anecdotal evidence suggested more partners were integrating their initiatives and deriving some benefits. This view was strongly supported by the meta-analysis and by the focus group and roundtable discussions with OAU staff and partners. At the outset of No Longer Vulnerable, a number of staff indicated that integration in the past had taken many different forms across partnerships. For example, an HIV and AIDS program in uMkhanyakude, KwaZulu-Natal, began to “build in” a food security and water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) element, as the reality of people living with HIV required far more than access to treatment or training in positive living. Integration was intuitively appealing to staff directly involved in programming – partly because the evolution of programs has stemmed from an initial focus on HIV with an incremental ‘integration’ of additional issues identified as being vital to effectively address the epidemic: nutritious food, access to broader health care and WASH. Eighteen months into No Longer Vulnerable, OAU staff had many more examples of where integration was happening. A striking point about such activities was that they were often emerging from the grassroots through careful community facilitation and learning. Two examples are briefly explored below.

CHoiCe Trust is a health organisation working in the Greater Tzaneen area of Mopani District in Limpopo Province, an area characterised by challenges, including poverty, unemployment and high rates of HIV, related to its predominantly rural and disadvantaged communities. The Community for Change Project has developed out of home-based care work conducted by an extensive network of community care workers trained and supported

by CHoiCe. An extensive re-strategising identified community participation and engagement as a central focus for future work, which directly informed the Community for Change Project. Now into a second year of piloting, an approach is emerging that has been endorsed by community members as an effective way to develop their voices within the villages. In this example, integration has emerged through social dialogue and diagnosis. The

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purpose of dialogue within communities has been to give feedback on a situational analysis (diagnosis) carried out in the communities. This process led to key issues being identified for future work including TB and HIV training, environmental hygiene awareness and nutrition. The community was surprised at some findings and, although many of the issues were already being addressed, it was agreed that CHoiCe would incorporate these into awareness campaigns and training in the villages concerned.

Although the integration aspect in Mopani resonates with what unfolded in uMkhanyakude a few years before, a methodology pivoting on community participation and ownership has underpinned the approach.

The community has been engaged in dialogue to understand and identify issues and to then prioritise what needs to be done. Task teams have been established to ensure key members of the community meet regularly with dialogue facilitators to implement community decisions. Committee members in each village have been involved in planning the feedback to the community. This is to equip them with an understanding of how to conduct the dialogue and to ensure that they recognised their role in feeding back information to the people that elected them. In other words, an accountability ethos has also been stimulated. Community engagement has been positive and any changes have been a direct result of the efforts of the community members, including engagement with the traditional leaders.

According to CHoiCe staff, this approach has led to programming that has been far more integrated than in the past, particularly on health and food security. As an example, thirty community members, divided equally between two villages, were trained in food security and health issues. These people were selected because they were already managing their own vegetable plots in a communal garden and were taking care of orphans and vulnerable children in their households. CHoiCe was able to identify key vulnerable households, which had greatest need for nutrition and WASH training, through community members using the children’s program that was already underway in the same villages. In this way, the participants of the training, many of whom were guardians of HIV-infected or affected children, were obliged to implement their learning because CHoiCe staff members would continue visiting the households and therefore monitor activities.

WASH training has been integrated with a range of issues, all concretised and made explicit through interactive sessions. Water safety issues were merged with topics such as sanitation and hygiene, HIV and AIDS, gender and disability. In reviewing what people had learned, there was clear interest and uptake amongst the participants particularly on topics of water safety and gender. A key lesson emerging from this experience is that training on a specific issue can be used to identify a range of matters that require integration if the challenges facing communities are to be addressed. This is particularly so if the training was informed by community participation.

Another example of integration has emerged from Sinamandla, a non-profit organisation in Pietermaritzburg, KwaZulu-Natal, which is primarily involved in promoting the Self Help Group (SHG) Project and building the capacity of its partner organisations. Sinamandla promotes self-reliance as a central concept within the communities it serves. In particular, the SHG Project focuses on the socio-economic empowerment of women, many of who have been left vulnerable by the impact of poverty and the AIDS pandemic. Many rural women are trapped in poverty with little access to resources and information, living in a patriarchal system that places a lower value on their contribution within the household and does not allow them to participate in everyday decision-making or to make broader life choices. The impact of the AIDS pandemic over the last two decades has greatly exacerbated the burden of poverty that they face. SHGs enable these women to better withstand shocks to their household and care for the children for whom they are responsible. As such, Sinamandla seeks to address the inequalities in the relationship between men and women and through SHGs strengthen the economic power of rural women to make them less vulnerable.

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Once the SHG concept is promoted in a community through home visits, interested community members are brought together to learn more and voluntarily join groups. Within the group, members make decisions for themselves, initially assisted by a local community facilitator, and use their own resources, specifically saving small amounts of money per person per week. They develop action plans for their group and initiate their own projects. There are high-levels of participation from the direct beneficiaries, who are the community facilitators, and indirect beneficiaries, who are the SHG members themselves. After six months of formation, SHGs have the opportunity to join a Cluster Level Association (CLA) consisting of seven to ten groups. A CLA enables the collective voice of women to be heard and enhances their combined efforts to be far greater than in just one SHG. The SHG concept not only allows community members to define and control the development process, it also brings in a natural tendency to integrate – as the grassroots perspective is seldom about discretely defined challenges.

The ‘one program’ approach was essentially in place for many partners for years preceding No Longer Vulnerable.

At the inception of the program, OAU staff commented that, by-and-large, most successful partners would not have to adapt to the new framework, as this is how they had been working. This seems to be the reality eighteen months into programming. There are many more examples of integrationhappening under No Longer Vulnerable, although there remains some variation in understanding amongst staff about what this is exactly. These vary from emphasising the core area or issue that a partner, project or programs coordinator is concerned about and allowing other related issues to be iteratively brought on to taking a more comprehensive approach to addressing multiple facets of vulnerability simultaneously.

An interesting dimension of the question of how adaptation to the newapproach has worked is the adjustment of OAU program coordinators from being sector specialists to facilitating broader change. Once again there is variation in this as some staff have retained a strong identity around a specific developmental challenge whilst others are inclined to being facilitators or enablers of change bringing in expertise where required.

Both are strengths for OAU as there is depth of sector-specific and strategic knowledge. No Longer Vulnerable has created much more opportunity for OAU staff to learn from each other and, through this, to develop the confidence to work differently and innovatively. This sharing has also led to a deeper understanding about how partners are working across the spectrum and to identify opportunities for linkages. The assurance that the organisation will support staff working differently has been important in this regard. Nonetheless, many staff members felt that they required ongoing support to become ‘holistic’ development specialists or facilitators and that this was a process rather than an end result. The challenge was to enable individuals to understand their ‘conditioning’ to work as specialists and to build on this in new and appropriate ways.

The approach has also created opportunities at grassroots level for integration to be tested in different ways, mostly emerging from an iterative approach as projects unfold. An emerging opportunity is for conscious reflection amongst OAU staff to interrogate and reflect on these experiences more critically to derive a set of principles that might inform future work. As a learning organisation, OAU has established institutional arrangements at local level that stimulate experimentation, adaptation and learning. This could be emphasised more at organisational level to consciously take stock of what has emerged at grassroots. The applied theory of change adopted under No Longer Vulnerable is essentially an adaptable practice that builds from the partners and asks the question: has enough space been created for experimentation, learning and adaptation?

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Gender

All the work undertaken under No Longer Vulnerable has a strong gender analysis. Work has been done internally with staff and externally with partners and other groups to develop the skills needed to improve programming in a way that recognises and responds to the need to place women more centrally as both actors in development and primary beneficiaries of OAU’s work. This reflects the abiding concern of the program that unless the structural roots of vulnerability are addressed, any change may be temporary and illusionary. Part of this agenda is that the women’s rights sector has been under threat in South Africa both in terms of dwindling funding and also because of resurgence in patriarchy and tradition, which often places the rights of women in subservience to those of men. As such, OAU has embraced its position of power as a donor to ensure gender is a core focus of the work undertaken by partners. Certainly most partner organisations had already articulated an intention to address gender inequality, but its reinforcement and support have made it core to the success of the program.

Another strength of No Longer Vulnerable is the diversity of partner organisations. This diversity includes ideological basis. Apart from bringing in new skills and approaches that contribute to the integration of programming, it also creates new alliances and positive tensions. This is overt in partners working primarily with gender; radical feminist perspectives inform and feed off approaches rooted in Christian beliefs and development practice. Although encompassing a broad spectrum of gender work, some perspectives may be seen to be poles apart, yet the programming has built a network whereby these views can support each other. Some of these issues are explored below.

Triangle confronts discrimination and rights violations in improving direct service provision for survivors of hate crimes directed at lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex (LGBTI) people. One of the strengths of the organisation is its multifaceted approach and how it links advocacy with direct services. Highlighting one example of Triangle’s approach, a dimension of safety for lesbians in townships is shaped by a continuum of ‘guilt’ and ‘innocence’ – in the eyes of society, people’s identities position them according to those who are to ‘blame’ and those who are ‘victims’. Women and children are frequently positioned as ‘innocent victims’, yet those seen to be breaking social and cultural codes and mores will forfeit the right to protection reserved for victims. Sexuality is an arena filled with deeply gendered mores and taboos. Taking this on in magistrate’s courts and through a broad ranging advocacy campaign, which includes submissions to parliament on Bills that are proposed, Triangle challenges these mores and taboos. This aligns with the Shukumisa Campaign, which is a coalition of twenty-eight organisations working to prevent and address sexual offences. The organisations in the Campaign provide counselling and court support to victims and their families, training to service providers, legal services and research and advocacy in the area of sexual offences nationally.

Pietermaritzburg Agency for Community Social Action (PACSA), a Christian-based organisation in Pietermaritzburg with a long history of confronting injustice, has a remarkably similar analysis of gender-based violence. PACSA has highlighted the increase in such violence as it has become more brutal. The organisation has underlined an increase in reported rapes of elderly women, arguing that while it is not a new feature of a violent and deeply patriarchal society, the brutal nature of these rapes has featured prominently in the media and focused national attention on gender-based violence. This has given greater prominence to the need for gender justice work and changing destructive masculine behaviour through positive role models. PACSA’s methodology hinges on strengthening community partner groups to make informed choices with regards to their own strategies to achieve livelihoods security, gender equality, HIV-competent communities and youth empowerment. As such, gender-based violence has become a key issue requiring solidarity between groups, which holds the possibility for greater linkages and linking of different struggles.

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Another important example of gendered work is that of the Women on Farms Project (WFP), which is a registered non-governmental organisation (NGO) working with women in commercial agriculture in the Western and Northern Cape. The overall mission of the organisation is to empower and strengthen the capacity of women who live and work on farms to claim their rights and fulfil their needs. Due to a number of intersecting and reinforcing factors, farmwomen experience high levels of vulnerability. This is despite the range of progressive legislative and constitutional provisions in the country. Rural women face high unemployment or tenuous or irregular incomes, prolonged periods of hunger, lack of access to productive land and are directly impacted by climate change, all resulting in high levels of food insecurity. High inflation rates limit the access to nutritious food beyond the basics. In a context where non-communicable diseases are becoming the major cause of death, questions about malnutrition are becoming paramount in development work. WFP aims to contribute to the realisation of the human rights of farmwomen through various programs encompassing health and empowerment, labour rights, land and housing, amongst others.

WFP has more recently emphasised a cooperative project that directly addresses the multi-dimensionality of discrimination and vulnerability experienced by farmwomen. It aims to improve the social and economic position of women through income generation, capacity building and household food security. The establishment of cooperatives in both an urban and rural context have illustrated the different challenges faced by women to address their vulnerability. The substantial need of urban-based women for a regular cash income, largely because of the costs associated with rent, electricity, train or taxi fares, as opposed to the more modest needs of rural-based women, exemplifies this. The urban women increasingly took on domestic work, which inevitably led to a degree of neglect of their agricultural production. Finding a balance between earning an income and work on the land to supplement food requirements has thus become a challenge with one proposal suggesting that the women take turns to earn money outside of the project thereby ensuring that there are always some on the land.

These experiences reinforce the need to build solidarity particularly through farmer-to-farmer learning exchanges, which are important tools for women to share information and build alliances. The space created in such ways has been valuable because women have been able to learn practical lessons from each other thus building confidence, as knowledge and experience were validated.

Apart from illustrating the diversity of approaches in the gender work supported under No Longer Vulnerable, this has also demonstrated a vulnerability context characterised by increasing poverty and inequality and also gender inequalities and discrimination, reinforced by socio-economic inequality. Clearly the objective goal to narrow inequalities as essential gendered work and to provide women with the spaces, not only to bring their own solutions, but also to make their own choices and build solidarity, is pivotal for the ongoing work of the program.

Active citizenship

In order to achieve societal change, the mobilisation and strengthening of civil society, particularly CBOs, remains OAU’s main emphasis. In the Joint Country Analysis Strategy (JCAS), partners are conceptualised as organised groups or institutions that are actors for change, who represent directly or have close relations with vulnerable and marginalised people in society (Oxfam International 2011). In other words, OAU has chosen to work with ‘change agents’ with close community ties to drive change from the grassroots, whilst simultaneously working at a macro level to ensure ‘higher-level’ institutions are also enabling a change process. The concept

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of active citizenship is key to this approach. This area of work has an emphasis on improving participation in municipal government, particularly in decision-making related to planning around and managing health and water and sanitation resources and facilities. This has been complemented by higher-level policy work intended to influence the broader enabling environment. An example of this is the monitoring of the implementation of the South Africa National Strategic Plan on HIV, sexually transmitted infections (STIs) and TB and on community participation design and consultation processes for the National Health Insurance.

The notion of vulnerability that is embedded in No Longer Vulnerable, as opposed to addressing poverty or another development priority, allows for a more dynamic and suitable way of designing programs that are responsive to community contexts and people’s shifting experiences of the social and economic spectrum. A major issue articulated by OAU staff and partner organisations was that the situation in the country would not fundamentally change until South Africans are ready to hold duty bearers to account. A telling illustration of this was provided by a partner organisation working at local level: “the best (development) work takes place where community leaders are connected to the national party structures. We have to be careful about what colours we wear, there are no colours left to wear”. As a result, people are afraid to speak out about their rights in case of being identified as ‘the other’ and of being marginalised. Thus it is often very difficult for community members to play a bigger role in engaging the government in decisions they make partly because of fear, a lack of confidence, knowledge about how to do so and dependency.

A number of experiences have emerged thus far in terms of partner organisations engaging the state. Examples of how active citizenship has lubricated the change process can be found throughout the partner reports, often on a small-scale but usually to effect. Examples already mentioned include the use of community dialogue to build accountability and the SHG approach. Others involve the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) in KwaZulu-Natal, which is documented in more detail in the subsequent section dealing with health outcomes. The approach of TAC has been to mobilise its membership structure to support and engage government structures as necessary.

Having a multi-pronged approach that can be targeted at national level and within a particular community has proven effective.

Although a number of experiences exist, a recurring question amongst staff was how to translate this work into something broader that could fundamentally address the structural underpinning of vulnerability. Part of this is about continued sharing of approaches and experiences of successfully engaging with state structures and joining these up where there is an opportunity. The focus should not be on pressuring partners to become advocacy organisations, but rather to identify and elaborate models through which change has been created at local level, with the evidence base to show how this has happened.

A number of documents indicated that during the first year of No Longer Vulnerable, OAU’s key focal activity was intended to be a cross-affiliate, country-level event to host and build a civil society platform known as Awethu! This was intended to build a joint civil society position on development prior to the South African national elections in 2014, which would provide a rallying point to articulate key issues in the country in relation to inequality, poverty and justice. It was planned that through this process, political parties contesting the 2014 national elections would be influenced by a broad civil society position on a variety of development and social issues. Although the event happened, largely through the auspices of Oxfam Great Britain, it seems that a number of partner organisations did not engage because of a lack of communication. The need for such a platform was strongly supported during the roundtable discussions, which opens this up as a new opportunity for the No Longer Vulnerable program. This would be to focus on building up local-level practice, collectivising it, and facilitating discussion on the national stage via strategic partners. A cautionary note is that communitybased and people-centred organisations must be willing to represent themselves on such a platform.

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Given the prevalence of contestation in South Africa – whether between communities and the state or within communities themselves – it is imperative that development practice begins to engage with conflict and contestation as a means through which to bolster the resilience of those who are most vulnerable. In a context characterised by poverty, scarcity and inequality, conflict exacerbates the vulnerability of the poor. Conflict can therefore be immensely destructive. However, conflict can be managed in a way that generates useful outcomes.

The core assumption is that processes of planning, decision-making and development are inherently contested. OAU has a clear vision for a different society and has initiated a different discourse about a different future. Part of this is to acknowledge and engage in a contestation around power. Indeed, protests are an important mechanism of political negotiations in South Africa; “the street has become the theatre of politics”. A question is how to sustain protests; and interlink them. Part of that process is to bring people together as envisaged by Awethu!

As defined in the program framework, service delivery provision is contentious and contested, particularly when a large section of the population is weakened by a daily preoccupation with the struggle for survival, in the most unequal country in the world that is crippled by high levels of poverty and unemployment. A key learning from No Longer Vulnerable is the need for participatory spaces, which allow communities to express disagreements, contest power and outcomes, and reach decisions. This active citizenship helps to coherently address the underpinnings of vulnerability. If structured in a manner that expands dialogue and enables new solutions to be created, contestation can contribute substantively to building the strength of a community and, indeed, codesign the kinds of programs supported by OAU. Understanding the role of contestation in planning processes leads to a better understanding of how to develop people’s capacity to build agency through collective action. This approach overturns the tendency to romanticise the coherence of communities and, in so doing, underestimating their complexity.

Improved health outcomes

OAU has continued to support organisations working across the continuum of the HIV and AIDS response including looking at the dual infection with TB. Specific, innovative work around the provision of youth friendly services has been supported as a way to develop integrated response models. Policy work has focused on the National Strategic Plan and National Health Insurance and partners were supported to engage in discussion around a future human resource framework for health. However, two OAU partners had important experiences, which provide an invaluable and somewhat unique look at the health system in South Africa and how OAU can help address the dysfunctional system.

The overarching objective of the health outcomes focus of No Longer Vulnerable is to strengthen communitybased provision of essential health services; assist community members to assert the right to quality health care; support the development and implementation of integrated HIV programs and reduce the incidence of water-related diseases and infections. A good example of a partner responding to this is the Bela Bela project in Limpopo. The aim of the project, led by the HIV and AIDS Prevention Group (HAPG), is to improve the health and life of the Bela Bela community through an integrated approach to preventing the spread of infectious diseases such as HIV, TB and diarrhoea. Particular entry points include schools, clinics, workplaces and social gatherings.

Specific objectives include enhancing HIV counselling and testing and strengthening adherence to therapy for HIV and TB through treatment literacy and advanced adherence counselling; providing daily home based care for patients in need of home care and conducting intensive case finding for HIV and TB; and to provide daily ongoing care and medical support to patients registered with the HAPG wellness clinic and adherence support to patients in government clinics.

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The Bela Bela program keeps growing and continually adapts to address community needs within the changing context of essential service provision. The organisation’s work is attributed to developing a model of care that uniquely transforms human lives, informs science and other learning institutions around HIV and AIDS. The advanced adherence training for HIV patients on highly active anti-retroviral treatment has proven to be effective with patients having increased treatment adherence knowledge. As a result there seems to be little need in Bela Bela to continue with treatment adherence as a stand-alone activity. Therefore, HAPG will use a holistic approach integrating WASH into their HIV and TB prevention program. Once again, this is an example of building a holistic approach to health pivoting on a core focus area that is well functioning.

A key challenge facing Bela Bela, which is illustrative of partners across the country, is that the local public health services seem to be deteriorating everyday as there is no treatment available for infectious diseases, no vaccines for children and no antibiotics. This resulted in patients not having the medication to ensure adherence forcing them to default. In response, HAPG is now seeking out these clients in their homes and intensifying their awareness campaigns to motivate patients that have been discouraged by the unavailability of medication to adhere to treatment, as they will close sthe gap in the interim. Discouraged patients end up defaulting and by the time medication is available at hospital they are already sick. Apart from the dysfunctional nature of the Limpopo Health Department in terms of essential services, they have posed a threat to the Bela Bela project in attempting to take it over.

The Bela Bela project has coherently demonstrated how an effectively functioning clinic can be structured around a strict sequence of time-bound routines and systems of recording and reporting. Without this, patient care becomes a hit and miss affair. At the same time, these strict routines must provide both the information base and the space for discretion and judgement based on the skill and experience of health professionals, since human ill health is an extremely complex and highly variable phenomenon.

In many ways the experience of Bela Bela stands in contrast to the experience of TAC in KwaZulu-Natal. TAC advocates for increased access to treatment, care and support services for people living with HIV and campaigns to reduce new HIV infections. As a membership-based organisation, TAC has become a leading civil society force behind comprehensive health care services for people living with HIV. Under No Longer Vulnerable, TAC supports the promotion and uptake of prevention and treatment health services within KwaZulu-Natal. The KwaZulu-Natal provincial government is leading the way in setting an example of improving health systems and health service provision. To support and strengthen this, the provincial leaders of TAC from both within their governance and management structures identified that their most effective contribution to improving access to treatment and prevention services was to focus on education and awareness amongst communities. Through this, communities would be more aware of available services and why they should seek out these services. Linked to this, TAC planned to consolidate their broad goal of supporting and strengthening local, national and international activist-led campaigns, advocating for high-quality, comprehensive HIV/TB prevention, diagnosis, treatment, care and support programs. This combination of national campaigns and local level mobilisation and activism was intended to support government where it showed commitment and hold it accountable where it slipped.

Again in contrast to Bela Bela, TAC and the provincial Department of Health are working closely together to improve the provision of treatment and prevention services. The department has accepted the strong civil society watchdog role that TAC plays, and apparently recognises the organisation as a valuable resource in the improvement of its service provision. KwaZulu-Natal enjoys a relatively strong supply of prevention and treatment services thanks to a comparatively well-functioning department. There are still some significant gaps in service delivery and in education around the benefits of seeking prevention and treatment services. Many new clinics

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and the district health system are not adequately functional because of a lack of personnel, lack of space, poor administration, expanding demand, poor governance and accountability and misuse of funds. Given the government’s commitment to improving its services in the province, TAC has learnt that it can play an invaluable role in spreading education and awareness through its own branches and members, as well as through its growing network or partners especially in areas in which TAC does not have a presence. Partnerships have shown to be a particularly effective and efficient method of propagating TAC’s aims and objectives.

The overarching question emerging from these two partners is how to effectively engage the public health system. Karl von Holdt (2010) undertook a detailed study of the Health Department, which was described as a large-scale and complex public service delivery agency. The study provides a concrete analysis of the workings of the post-apartheid South African state bureaucracy, within the state hospitals and provincial health departments, in an effort to understand the reasons for its poor functioning. The research points to a contradictory set of rationales shaping the workings of the bureaucracy. Essentially the study argued that overcentralisation, fragmentation into silo structures, low management capacity and understaffing were the primary causes of institutional stress and poor healthcare outcomes. Of particular importance, the culture of staff moving onwards and upwards from frontline health activities encouraged an attitude of ‘facing upwards’ towards the next job prospect, rather than ‘facing downwards’ towards the patient or client. This meant that staff members were less inclined to focus on improving the functioning of the domain for which they were responsible.

There was a high turnover of incumbents, and a significant number move out of the agency or department where they were located, making it difficult to create a stable body of expertise in the functioning of a specific department such as health.

Reflecting on this analysis and the experiences of Bela Bela and TAC, it is clear that the strategy should pivot on mobilising people to demand from provincial structures an adequate and functioning service at district and local level. There is little chance of the government establishing a developmental state – for which the hallmark is effective bureaucracy – unless internal change occurs to define meeting the needs of the people as the central strategy for overcoming the legacy of apartheid. Bela Bela has demonstrated how effective and focused operations with better leadership and management can achieve quality health services. TAC has a proven track record of working both outside and with government to bring about change. The two entities provide an important opportunity to consolidate OAU’s overarching strategy to elicit change in the health sector.

Water, sanitation and hygiene

The aim of this area of work is to integrate WASH across the No Longer Vulnerable program. Specific attention is being paid within OAU to improving the understanding of WASH programming with an emphasis on gender; developing a modular water access solution using water harvesting as a basis; developing an integrated model to supplement water, food and energy inputs for rural households; testing and recommending appropriate water filtration technologies that can be applied at the point of consumption; supporting communities to engage local government around issues related to the delivery water; and rolling out a large scale hygiene and sanitation program using schools (early childhood development or ECD, primary and secondary), adult basic education groups and home-based care workers education as entry points into community.

Key lessons that have emerged from the programming include an understanding that WASH- and HIV-related services should be integrated for increased impact. Partners have emerging models for the successful integration of these two focus areas. For example, OneVoice South Africa (OVSA) has demonstrated the

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integration of elements of WASH into life skills including an HIV, STIs and TB prevention educational program. An important factor has been the translation of knowledge into action within the community and enabling learners to believe in their own ability to implement change. Increasing the ‘voice’of partners and communities on WASH issues facilitates a process of holding decision makers to account on service delivery quality and time lines.

These issues are explored in more detail below.

OVSA is an NGO that uses creative ways of educating young people in schools from low socio-economic backgrounds on issues relating to HIV and AIDS. Young people in South Africa are at high risk of contracting HIV and it is within this context that OVSA has designed and implemented an innovative HIV prevention program with and for young people in schools. The program provides a platform to discuss and address HIV, STIs and TB prevention, enhance their life skills so they can be better equipped and assertive in decision making pertaining to sexual reproductive health rights, gender, and human rights so as to promote healthy living. OVSA‘s current proposal is to continue to integrate elements of WASH into the life skills educational program. The project supports learners with a greater understanding of hygiene and sanitation and its link to the disease burden such as HIV and other sexual and reproductive health and rights issues. Based on this experience, OVSA expects to play the role of trainer, advisor and supporter to other OAU WASH partners, so as to guide them on how to mobilise school communities on WASH. Woza Moya is an NGO based in Ixopo, KwaZulu-Natal, with an emphasis on community care and support, in particular focusing on people infected and affected by HIV and AIDS with attention on children and their care givers. By providing home based care, child and youth care, food security and paralegal services, Woza Moya aims to alleviate poverty through an integrated approach that is holistic and multi-faceted. As such, the organisation involves the whole community in the identification of its problems and ownership of the solutions. Recently emphasis has been placed on WASH activities with more focus on developing the community’s knowledge, skills, awareness and capacity around related WASH issues. This shift from ‘hardware’ to a more ‘software’ focus is vital for the maintenance and sustainability of the new WASH infrastructure and community investments.

WASH programming includes WASH integration training for community members, emphasising the role of such knowledge in providing the ‘glue’ that binds a wide range of development issues together to provide a holistic outcome. Demonstration sites have been established to provide training grounds for WASH field workers. This has reportedly resulted in a positive impact on the team and within households as issues relating to health and hygiene in homes are now more readily identified and spoken about. As community members have become more aware of the important practice of hand washing, consistently and correctly, a reduction in diarrhoea and related illnesses has occurred. This reiterates the growing evidence about the integral linkages between WASH and nutrition through the impact of safe drinking water, sanitation, and good hygiene on the immediate and underlying causes of malnutrition, such as diarrheal disease and environmental enteropathy. A recent study argued that achieving the water and sanitation Millennium Development Goal contributes an average 30 percent toward other MDGs such as girls’ education, maternal and child health, and gender empowerment (UNICEF/WHO 2012). Addressing the causes of under five-child mortality through maternal and child health interventions can be hindered if progress is not also made in the areas of access to safe drinking water, sanitation and hygiene.

A major learning from Woza Moya is that WASH infrastructure is costly and time consuming with a range of hidden costs and unexpected challenges continually arising in the programming. Discussions at informal meetings encouraged Woza Moya to return to basics with regard to the WASH program. On probing why some reports were

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not fully populated with regard to the WASH program, project leaders realised that there was confusion regarding the integration of WASH issues into existing programs of home-based care, food security, and efforts focused on orphan and other vulnerable children. The integration process thus requires careful training and knowledge development for it to take hold and have an impact with the resultant shift to WASH integration training.

Food and livelihoods

Work in this area has largely focused on supporting food security and livelihoods with an expansion of water access work to improve the productive output of household food gardens, food producing cooperatives and other small-scale producers. The emphasis of the work has been on providing appropriate food that will contribute towards the achievement of positive health outcomes. Key learnings to emerge from the program include that the integration of food security work with WASH, livelihoods work, HIV and disaster risk reduction has resulted in partners developing a stronger understanding of the interconnectedness of systems and processes, which has maximised the impact of their work on development-related issues. This is a fascinating insight as in many ways the early ‘integration’ experiences of OAU were based on HIV and nutrition security, which continues to provide important insights for the organisation.

Biowatch South Africa, one of OAU’s key food security partners, challenges industrial agriculture and demonstrates ecologically sustainable alternatives to ensure biodiversity, food sovereignty and social justice.

By so doing the organisation aims to strengthen the position of small-scale farmers with whom it works in rural northern KwaZulu-Natal by advancing the rights of farmers to farm in the manner they choose and develop their capacity to produce crops and access markets. The challenges facing uMkhanyakude District Municipality and Pongola Municipality are that they are geographically and politically isolated with government support being difficult to access. In addition, these areas have some of the highest reported HIV infection rates in South Africa, which has reduced the viability of farming as a livelihoods activity. Biowatch has addressed some of these challenges by strengthening agro-ecology work at community level and developing advocacy strategies that start at community level and reach national level. Biowatch works with households that have ill adults or experienced adult mortality, which has made the households increasingly vulnerable to a range of shocks and stressors. These communities are exposed to, for example, poverty, prolonged drought, storms and lightening, all of which have contributed to increased food insecurity.

Biowatch has the objective of constructively engaging with local, provincial and national departments of agriculture around policy and legislation relevant to their advocacy concerns. Their measurement of this is “effective engagement with the different levels of government”, which they recognise as a challenge: “This is a challenging objective and it is the one that we have the least control over. There have been two reasonably successful engagements: one at local and provincial level (Department of Agriculture) and the other at national level (Department of Agriculture, Directorate of Stakeholder Relations). Another planned engagement with local agriculture has been repeatedly postponed by the Department of Agriculture but we will take it up again.” Once again this demonstrates the challenges of working with government across various spheres. An opportunity may be to mobilise farmer associations to themselves advocate for the support government often fails to provide.

Opportunities may also exist with the emerging policy on farmer support and extension and with linkages with broader OAU affiliates and strategy on food sovereignty.

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The Farmer Support Group (FSG), an NGO based at the University of KwaZulu-Natal in Pietermaritzburg, has an important experience of engaging government through a multi-stakeholder platform. FSG works with communities to create leadership, an enabling environment for village members – especially women – to know their rights and offer training in land use for agriculture. In the past, FSG has worked with communities in agriculture, savings and credit activities. Working with the government through multi-stakeholder support was reported to be an added advantage as the Okhahlamba Local Municipality has taken an initiative to address some of the challenges faced by the community including the access to markets. This provides an experience of working with government through a multi-stakeholder platform that is largely positive and worth sharing with other partners. Due to regular meetings where farmers interact with stakeholders, a positive relationship is emerging between farmers and government.

In terms of taking the food security agenda forward, an opportunity exists to challenge assumptions within the National Development Plan (NDP), which has become the overarching development agenda for government. The NDP (NPC 2012) identifies agriculture as a primary economic activity in rural areas with the potential to create one million new jobs by 2030. The plan also proposes a number of approaches to land reform and it’s financing.

However, Chapter 6 of the NDP, although not explicit, is geared towards large-scale irrigation farming, fuel-based mechanisation, mono cropping, and export-oriented and agro-chemical industrial agriculture. In other words, the needs and priorities of small-scale farmers, especially women, are not emphasised; instead, the current industrialised, neoliberal, market-based model is preferred. The transformation of agriculture to meet the needs of at least 2.5 million South African households practising smallholder and subsistence farming requires different models, many of which are emerging under the No Longer Vulnerable framework.

The No Longer Vulnerable framework also identifies the need to better understand household food choices and the external factors impacting on these, to define a package of services that could contribute to improved food security and to highlight the critical role women play in the production, procurement and preparation of food. In addition, a particular campaign was to be explored to build ‘consumer groups’ in rural communities that could actively use their buying power to shape what food was available in these communities. The potential to connect these to middle class, urban-based groups to generate a broader ‘food movement’ would also be explored.

Access to rights and social protection

This area of work has focussed on increasing social protection for children generally; two age cohorts are of particular interest: Children from birth to five years old in ECD facilities and adolescents aged from thirteen to sixteen on accessing or preparing to access anti-retroviral treatment. Work supported in the ECD sector includes programs to improve the quality of teaching through innovative approaches to develop ECD practitioner’s skills; through hygiene and sanitation education and training, improving the number of learning days lost to waterrelated diseases and infections; improving the governance of crèche facilities; lobbying local government for increased access to subsidies; and exploring innovative approaches to the provision of child care. The work around adolescent treatment has been located in existing partners’ education, awareness raising and prevention programs; developing a deeper understanding of adolescent sexuality and the prevention approaches best suited to working with both infected young people and young people at risk of infection; and supporting partners to develop and promote support models that are appropriate to the current social norms.

Partner’s engagement of local politicians such as ward councillors often serves as an initial link between communities and local government. Risks exist that the issues raised may become politicised in a ‘party politics’ manner. Nonetheless, mobilised communities that hold local officials to account for the quality of service delivery see increased results in service quality to their communities.

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Justice and Women (JAW) is a non-profit organisation based in Pietermaritzburg, KwaZulu-Natal. JAW targets rural communities in Melmoth and Ulundi providing rights-based advocacy programming towards social change.

The program addresses health outcomes around HIV and AIDS, women and children’s livelihoods and increases social protection for targeted communities. The work largely advances women’s leadership through raising awareness of women’s constitutional rights in health, economy and marriage. JAW uses a group work method through community dialogues. Women are empowered to participate and forge group and community solidarity in addressing social issues. When individual and group goals are met, women develop trust and are able to work together on gender advocacy issues. Over the years the women’s network has conducted various training workshops with members of the support group, a savings and loans group and community caregiver volunteers.

In these workshops women’s capacity and leadership has been promoted.

Looking across partners’ work on access to rights – and the right to social protection – it is clear that increasingly elaborate strategies are being implemented for campaigning around rights, advocating for justice and advancing the voices of minorities. Examples of this included engagement in national level processes regarding the Traditional Courts Bill and the Criminal Law (Sexual Offences and Related Matters) Amendment Act (also known as the Sexual Offences Act). Other examples are more general in terms of engaging government (across spheres) with varying degrees of success – from TAC to Biowatch.

Linking the section on active citizenry with access to rights, the notion that citizens are not passive users of public services but active holders of fundamental rights can be strengthened. Many NGOs operating in South Africa, including, for example, PACSA, have developed and used social accountability mechanisms over the years including. The monitoring of service delivery by active, community-based civil society can be strengthened by such mechanisms and the question arises whether No Longer Vulnerable can harness such opportunities to strengthen the rights program.

Disaster risk reduction

The Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) program was part of a three year pilot. During this period, five partner organisations developed and implemented programs that were specific to their contexts. For each organisation, DRR was a new area of work and so reflection and learning, as well as adaptation and flexibility were highlighted as key components of the OAU DRR program design. Three of the five partners are based in urban settings.

This focus on urban-based DRR programming has provided an opportunity to explore urban work particularly in the inner city and informal settlements, with an emphasis on safer spaces for vulnerable groups, such as young women and refugees, in communities. For example, the integration of WASH and DRR programs has added value to the program and to the work of partners particularly as it has given partners the opportunity to respond holistically to issues related to better health and access to basic rights. In many ways the DRR program exemplifies the notion of integration to address vulnerability, as rights-based initiatives have influenced and engaged more direct developmental processes to respond to community needs. Working with particular notions of vulnerability in refugee communities and with women in informal settlements, DRR has provided new opportunities to push the boundaries of disaster preparedness and risk reduction.

One example of this work comes from Project Empower (PE). For more than a decade, PE has contributed to strengthening community responses to HIV including working with a range of NGOs, CBOs and members of communities. This has focused on increasing knowledge of HIV, developing understandings of the socioeconomic drivers of HIV, developing personal skills appropriate to mitigating the impact of the epidemic and supporting community efforts to create more enabling environments for people vulnerable to HIV.

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PE conducted DRR programs in two informal settlements, working with groups of young women. Through their experience working in South Africa, PE has been able to identify these beneficiaries as being some of the most vulnerable people in the community. In South Africa, informal settlements are often built on unsafe land (prone to landslides and flooding), where there is little or no access to services (enabling the rapid spread of fires and disease). The houses in informal settlements are often made of re-purposed materials and by people with limited building skills. Subsequently, they are not always able to withstand exposure and partially collapse (especially during the summer rains). Women living in informal settlements often have to depend on others for material support as well as physical protection. One of the ways this dependence is articulated is in the construction of houses, which is normally done by men. This cycle of dependence can result in the disempowerment and abuse of women. The approach of PE is to work with small groups of women through a consciousness-raising group process where women develop an analysis of their lives and their rights, and the ability to begin to advocate for their rights at community level, using community structures as a vehicle. PE works towards supporting women in poor and vulnerable contexts to advocate for their rights, rather than implementing advocacy strategies on their behalf, or supplying services directly. The organisation believes the approach encourages independence rather than dependence and ensures long-term state accountability towards women.

The DRR program of PE is two-pronged. The first part involves creating awareness amongst community members (including an informal early warning system for storms) and creating a system of support amongst (female) community members to increase resilience (through activities such as digging swells and rebuilding homes).

This has an important gender benefit as it decreases the dependence of women on men. PE reports that young women feel increasingly aware of practical steps that can be taken to protect their homes from flooding and to support one another. The second component of the program sought to build the awareness of local leaders and government about the importance of a DRR action plan and, where possible, support in the participatory construction and monitoring of such a plan for the community. PE is supporting women to engage with authorities in order to access water and sanitation. Following training, a series of engagement meetings with authorities allowed women to demonstrate the skills they had learned and receive immediate positive results reinforcing their actions.

The DRR program has influenced broader, regional work in re-thinking more traditional concepts associated with disasters. People migrating into urban areas are often forced to set up homes in shacks in marginal areas where there are few essential services, and they are extremely vulnerable to the impact of floods and fire.

Finding community-based structures to acknowledge these and to advocate for government responses, the DRR program has reiterated the need to look beyond just the provision of facilities and support services and has highlighted the physical environment and women-specific risks.

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As demonstrated throughout this review, unanticipated events, political change, personnel moves, physical and technological shifts, interprogram and intra-program interactions, practitioner learning, media coverage, organisational imperatives, performance management innovations and so on make programs permeable. The broadness of the thematic areas, and the nature of how OAU works in practice, means that there is flexibility and adaptability to address this reality. It also means that OAU is able to use this fluidity as an opportunity. At the core of this work is the notion of vulnerability in contemporary South Africa.

Vulnerability can be defined as ‘the degree to which a population or system is susceptible to, and unable to cope with, hazards or stresses’ (Pasteur 2011: 11). McAslan (2011) argues that vulnerability stems from the overlap of human systems, the natural environment and the built environment. Reviewing the broad range of factors with which No Longer Vulnerable is engaged through various partner organisations, a complex, entwined notion of social vulnerability emerges; people are vulnerable in the interface between the human, environmental and development systems. Key factors that contribute to social vulnerability are location, access to information, the quality of infrastructure, housing type, density of the built environment, economic wellbeing of a community, access to resources and political status highlighting issues of inclusion and marginalisation. These seem to accurately characterise the context and target of OAU’s work.

The notion of social vulnerability is valuable for two reasons. Firstly, it allows for an appreciation that shocks and stresses are not necessarily (exclusively) environmental in nature but can also be the result of changes in the social, economic or political environment, such as illness, death, loss of employment or political conflict.

Secondly, and more importantly perhaps, it recognises that vulnerability is the sum total of factors in the sociocultural, natural, physical, economic and political environment. In other words, it is multi-dimensional. Pasteur (2011) argues that people who live in impoverished social and economic conditions are more susceptible to environmental hazards as they have fewer resources to draw on in order to cope with, and recover from, these shocks. If people have weak access to, and influence over, the institutions and policies that govern their access to resources and decision making, they can do little to address the underlying causes of their vulnerability (Pasteur 2011). Using this statement as a lens onto the work of OAU and the conceptualisation of No Longer Vulnerable, the two are clearly aligned.

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There has been some debate within OAU about the notion of resilience and whether No Longer Vulnerable is working towards this as an end result of programming. The idea is alluring, suggesting an ability to ‘bounce back’ from adversity and, possibly even achieve a state that is better than the original one, prior to the misfortune. There is, however, a danger in using the term uncritically, particularly if its interpretation is devoid of an understanding of power, agency and responsibility. Resilience theory fails to take adequate account of systemic factors that result in social vulnerability and undermine resilience, particularly how power, ecology and development intersect. The relations of power are left intact, and the notion of social justice is excluded from the purview, because of the blind spot of how power is exerted and manifested (Ernstson 2014; Slater 2014).

Although the concept of resilience incorporates an element of transformation, this does not mean that it is grounded in a radical agenda of transformation of power relations.

No Longer Vulnerable has clearly pushed programming beyond static measures such as ‘poverty’ but a real challenge remains the shifting nature of vulnerability, which applies across the range of South Africans. This notion of vulnerability enables a more dynamic and more suitable way of designing programs given what is known and recognised within OAU about community contexts and people’s shifting experiences of the social and economic spectrum. There is clearly a recommendation that OAU, at the end of the program in eighteen months time, stands back and reflects on the concept of vulnerability that has emerged in its programming and to distil a paper that can be widely shared across partners, OAU affiliates and more broadly.

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Implicit in the change process facilitated by OAU and largely executed by partner organisations working with and in communities is a rightsbased approach that places the voice and active role of individuals and communities in the design, implementation, governance and monitoring of initiatives.

Key to this is the role of the state to deliver essential services and the enabling environment for people to reach their full potential. As seen from the complex context in which No Longer Vulnerable operates, this depends on change occurring in multiple spheres. It is through the working of entire systems of social relationships that changes in behaviours, events and social conditions are affected. This is made explicit through reference and use of Rao and Kelleher’s integral framework.

In essence, the integral framework helps consider a development initiative through identifying the major forces that influence the success or failure of that initiative. These forces rest within four quadrants that provide a comprehensive map to help understand the terrain in which the initiative must succeed. The strength of this approach is that it challenges assumptions that change in one area, such as reforming policy at national or provincial level, necessarily results in improvements in the ability of individuals to access their rights as defined by that policy – such as infrastructure, services and knowledge. Rather than presenting change in the form of a linear logic model, the integral framework accommodates complexity and recognises that strategies to achieve change in one sphere will have effects in others and can, therefore, be supported by complementary changes in others.

In reflecting critically on its use over the past eighteen months, key informants from both OAU staff and partners intuitively recognised the integral framework although not explicitly as part of programming. Some partners use it consciously in planning and assessing initiatives whilst the majority recognise it intuitively as being part of their work. Many partners believe a more conscious use of the framework would strengthen their strategy.

In particular, it can be used to identify what is missing to elicit change and what partner organisations have the power to change. In instances where partners’ work does not coherently address the lower right quadrant (formal institutions – laws, policies and networks), partnerships can be established with advocacy and policy organisations. Similarly, a more explicit focus on the lower left quadrant can be used to emphasise a focus on gender and women’s empowerment. Essentially the framework helps view the whole system in which people are embedded. By working only in one sphere of this system, change will not be achieved.

This was demonstrated by PE: “Our learnings have for the most part been positive, reinforcing the value of our approach [which is] working with groups of young women in order to create change in their lives…As a result of ongoing consciousness-raising meetings, we are beginning to see young women spontaneously supporting one another (in attending court cases, for example, and, in one instance, walking some distance to the court when we were unable to provide transport money in time), identifying issues and organising around these issues (attending the trial of the serial killer, for example), in confronting authorities (demanding to know the name of a policeman who was providing inadequate service).” Working at the individual level, by raising, and then transforming, consciousness and a deepened understanding of individual agency, a more collective approach to addressing specific vulnerability was enabled. By focusing on a long-term, slow approach to developing leadership and change agents at community level, sustained change in the targeted communities was enabled.

This could be replicated in other communities should the individual women relocate.

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Similarly, JAW also used the integral framework intuitively. The methodology pivoted on building greater awareness through discussions held in the ‘womb process’ whereby women formed internal capacity to reflect, problem solve, reach out to others for help and build solidarity with other women in similar situations. Through all of this a woman was, for example, able to work through a difficult family conflict where a vulnerable teenager was given support rather than face rejection. All of this was regarded as essential in women’s empowerment, building social capital and rebuilding community cohesion. JAW has subsequently begun to use the framework in reporting, which reflects the analytical power of working through the quadrants to identify opportunity and challenge. There is clearly some advantage in using the framework more explicitly in reporting.

CHoiCe Trust uses the integral framework more explicitly than most other partners largely because it was the adopted framework before aligning with OAU, which means the organisation has used it in practice for a longer period than other partners. Staff use the framework to ascertain what is missing and what is in their power to change. One clear benefit is that it allows them to identify other partners and create linkages where there are gaps in their work: partnerships are key to achieving long-term goals. CHoiCe also argued that by raising individual consciousness (in the top, left quadrant), resources could be identified and mobilised both within individuals and groups to drive change processes.

OAU staff members believed that although the integral framework was not enforced or a prerequisite for programming design and implementation, it provided a theoretical justification for the work. In other words, it was not an abstract notion but a practical framework that could be used to think more carefully through what partners were doing to create sustained change. In the focus group discussion with OAU staff, it was suggested that the practice of referring back and using the framework should be made more central to day-to-day operations and in reporting. OAU staff felt that as most partners already acknowledged that change happened at different levels this would not be an imposition or seen negatively. This was supported by some partner organisations in the roundtable discussions. It is suggested that the integral framework is shared and discussed with partners before this is adopted.

The integral framework also allows OAU to review its entire body of work more holistically, particularly in reviewing efforts to address a specific objective or the overall aim. For example, where partners’ work does not coherently address laws, policies and networks (the lower, right quadrant), partnerships can be established with advocacy and policy organisations. This might, for example, be an opportunity for an organisation like Biowatch, which has stated clearly the challenges of trying to influence or shift provincial government in issues around agroecology. Similarly the body of work unfolding under No Longer Vulnerable could be considered in this way.

This suggests that OAU would benefit from a more explicit use of the framework in terms of internal strategic reflection particularly around the more challenging structural underpinnings of vulnerability and what it will take to substantively shift these.

A suggestion to make the integral framework a more tangible reflective tool would be to develop indicators for each of the quadrants that could be used within the monitoring, evaluation and learning framework. One challenge of this would be the temporal dimension of change, as partners might have different views on the scale of change required and the time needed to enable this. This would, however, allow OAU to look at partners in a longer-term context to ascertain what changes have happened. This could be used to co-develop with partners an analysis of the root causes of vulnerability (as exemplified in specific contexts) and subsequently evolve a short-, mediumand long-term strategy for each partner to address these causes. This would also strengthen a focus on the causes rather than the consequences of vulnerability. Engaging the structural dimensions of power that underpin vulnerability such as gender inequality may produce greater, longer-term change.

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This section identifies key learnings that have emerged from the review, followed by a number of recommendations for OAU. It thus brings together the success factors, challenges, gaps and areas for improvement that have been discussed throughout the paper.

Program design Theory of change

As seen from the complex context in which OAU works, facilitating change depends on working across multiple spheres. An explicit recognition of this is made in the theory of change that lies at the heart of No Longer Vulnerable. This draws on Rao and Kelleher’s integral framework, which pivots on four quadrants: individuals within communities (rights holders) holding local government (duty bearers) to account; improved access to services; effectiveness of governance through strengthened connection between rights holders and duty bearers; and reduced inequalities through access of better services.

Although staff and partners intuitively recognise the integral framework, it is mostly not an explicit part of programming. Many partners and some staff believe a more conscious use of the framework would strengthen strategy. In particular, it can be used to identify what is missing to elicit change and what is in our power to change. In instances where partners’ work does not coherently address the lower right quadrant (formal institutions – laws, policies and networks), partnerships can be established with advocacy and policy organisations. Similarly, a more explicit focus on the lower left quadrant can be used to emphasise a focus on gender and women’s empowerment. Essentially the framework helps view the whole system in which people are embedded. By working only in one sphere of this system, change will not be achieved.

A key recommendation is for OAU to raise awareness of the integral framework, both internally and amongst partners, as a more explicit part of programming and strategy development.

Theory of action

Implementation builds on OAU’s theory of action: strengthen CSOs, through their work empower communities, and through them change society. A number of mechanisms are key to the change process. These include leveraging different resources (money, time, skills, networks, partnerships, and issue knowledge) to enable partners to work with and within the communities they serve and to which they belong. In addition to these, four critical factors that interact across temporal and spatial scales should be made more explicit in OAU’s work: •

•

•

•

Learning to live with change and uncertainty. Making memory more of a focus of strategic discussions with communities will further strengthen the identification and mobilisation of internal resources that communities have in addressing vulnerability.

Nurturing diversity in its various forms. Identifying the diversity that exists in a community and ensuring a multiplicity of voices and experiences further strengthens an approach to build on ‘what is already in place’.

Combining different types of knowledge for learning. Recognising the complementarity of different knowledge systems and establishing cross-scale platforms for dialogues is important for stimulating learning and innovation. This includes within OAU itself.

Creating opportunity for self-organisation and cross-scale linkages. Another key strategy of OAU is to link partner organisations across scales to build a comprehensive approach to addressing vulnerability. Applying this directly to the integral framework will help identify strategic linkages to elicit change.

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A key finding is that OAU is consistent in the way in which it communicates with organisations and in the way in which it behaves towards them. Training, methodology, dissemination of information and dialogue are important features of OAU’s contribution to the growth and development of partners. OAU’s tools and processes lead to an understanding of issues that change norms and values. This is clearly a plausible reason why No Longer Vulnerable has been successful thus far. Learning and sharing across the program have been identified and highlighted as a resource, which has encouraged either specific capacity strengthening or the development of new partnerships, linkages or alliances, for a wide range of partners.

Program implementation Integration as a way of working

There are a number of examples where integration is happening across OAU’s work. A striking point about such activities is that they are often emerging from the grassroots through careful community facilitation, social dialogue, diagnosis and learning. Addressing the multiple, overlapping issues facing communities cannot be addressed through silos. This might be a starting point for future programming.

No Longer Vulnerable has created opportunities for integration to be tested in different ways, mostly emerging from an iterative approach at local level. An emerging opportunity is for conscious reflection amongst OAU staff to interrogate and reflect on these experiences to derive a set of principles to inform future work.

The integrated approach allows partners to identify the links between factors underpinning social vulnerability and to prioritise these according to what particular beneficiaries articulate. This empowers partners, and, in turn, their beneficiaries and affected communities, to begin engaging the structural underpinnings of vulnerability such as holding local government to account for non delivery and poor services.

Active citizenship

Examples of how active citizenship has facilitated change, often on a small-scale, but usually to effect, can be found throughout the partner reports. These range from social dialogue and building accountability within communities to high-level advocacy campaigns. Having a multi-pronged approach that can be targeted at national level or within a particular community has proven effective. OAU has a clear role to make this more explicit in its strategy to link organisations across a particular issue.

Another opportunity is to strengthen the national civil society platform Awethu! to build solidarity in confronting development challenges in South Africa. This is to partly address the fragmented nature of many civil society attempts to hold the state and private sector to account in the country. Several partners referred to OAU’s convening power to pull organisations together in this regard.

An important reflection is that people are busy simply trying to survive in a very challenging environment. There is not enough space for debate and dialogue. OAU therefore needs to support different ways of creating dialogue within communities to build civil society.

Gender

Gender work is largely embedded throughout OAU’s work. An important learning is that women’s empowerment is often the key to addressing vulnerability, which seems to be increasingly recognised across programming from WASH, food and nutrition security, and smallholder farming to disaster risk reduction and accessing services.

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The overarching strategy to empower women is through their participation in groups that build community solidarity to address social issues. Group interaction, including sharing information, builds trust and establishes alliances. It also develops the confidence of groups of women as their knowledge and experience can be validated.

Attention is required to simultaneously address discrimination and improve women’s social and economic position through income generation, capacity building and household food security. Although women face a common multi-dimensionality of discrimination and vulnerability, there seem to be different forms of discrimination in the urban and rural context. This became explicit in the farmwomen work and the experiences with SHGs. A nuanced approach to specificity and location is often required.

Embracing contestation

Given the prevalence of contestation in South Africa – whether between communities and the state or within communities themselves – it is imperative that development practice engages with conflict and contestation as a means through which to address vulnerability. OAU has created participatory spaces to enable communities to express disagreements, contest power and outcomes, and reach decisions. If structured in a manner that expands dialogue and enables the emergence of new solutions, contestation can contribute to building the strength of a community. Understanding the role of contestation in planning processes leads to a better understanding of how to develop people’s capacity to build resilience through collective action.

Embracing community complexity

Development planning has a tendency to romanticise the coherence of communities and, in so doing, underestimate their complexity. This failure to recognise complexity often leads to inappropriate interventions and blowback from beneficiaries as the needs of communities are not adequately addressed. OAU partners, especially those working in the urban context, have embraced this. Experiences of how to do this should be an explicit learning across the organisation.

Reaching program objectives Improved health outcomes

A challenge facing partners working with health issues is “local public health services seem to be deteriorating every day” with “no treatment available for infectious diseases, no vaccines for children and no antibiotics”.

The overarching question emerging is how to effectively engage the public health system. A two-pronged strategy is emerging from partner’s work: to establish and demonstrate an effective system while simultaneously mobilising people and building partnerships to demand from government structures an adequate and functioning service at district and local level. A key message is that there is little chance of the government establishing a developmental state – for which the hallmark is effective bureaucracy – unless internal change occurs to define meeting the needs of the people as the central strategy for overcoming the apartheid legacy.

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Water, sanitation and hygiene

An understanding emerging across partners is that WASH and HIV-related services should be integrated for increased impact. Partners have emerging models for the successful integration of these two focus areas. A central strategy has been to support learners with a greater understanding of hygiene and sanitation and its link to the disease burden such as HIV and other sexual and reproductive health and rights issues.

Another opportunity exists with linking WASH with food and nutrition security, as exemplified in the work of the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and others.

Food and livelihoods

Through the integration of food security work with WASH, livelihoods work, HIV and disaster risk reduction, partners have developed a stronger understanding of the interconnectedness of systems and processes, which has maximised the impact of work on development-related issues.

A challenge experienced by several partners focused primarily on food security work has been how to effectively engage with the different levels of government as there is little control over the terms of engagement. An opportunity may be to mobilise farmer associations to themselves advocate for the support government often fails to provide. Opportunities may exist with the emerging policy on farmer support and extension and with linkages with broader OAU affiliates and strategy on food sovereignty.

There is an opportunity in more explicit consciousness-raising in connection with livelihood work. Bringing people together to explore questions such as ‘why is our situation like this?’ and ‘what is our capacity to create change?’ can create more holistic strategies for addressing vulnerability.

Access to rights and social protection

Partners implemented increasingly complex strategies for campaigning around rights, advocating for justice and advancing the voices of minorities. These transcended different levels from national processes such as the Traditional Courts Bill to attending ward committee meetings. Also more generally in terms of engaging government (across spheres) with varying degrees of success – from national level campaigns (TAC) to local economic development (FSG).

A key question is whether there is a role for more social accountability mechanisms in OAU’s work.

Disaster risk reduction

The most important project outcome is the recognition of the role of poverty and inequality in creating and perpetuating the cycle of vulnerability. Another important outcome is the recognition that proactive action can reduce vulnerability and increase resilience and that such action is often evident in long-term development.

In this way, DRR becomes the link between response and preparedness and long-term development. Partner organisations work to address this in all the development work they do. An important conceptual complexity that existed in this program was primarily related to how the concept of DRR was interpreted and applied through the program in South Africa. Essentially, partners in South Africa interpreted DRR as it related to ‘everyday’ issues.

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Over the three year period of the program it has become evident that the concept of DRR is important in the discussion of service provision. As mentioned, in South Africa many aspects of DRR are related to service delivery (adequate housing, safe and sufficient electricity, clean drinking water, sanitation systems, the disposal of waste) and this directly linked to health outcomes.

The most notable change for partners in the three years was the realisation and observation that DRR had gone from a relatively unknown, unacknowledged, and, in some instances, new area of work to one that partner organisations felt became fundamentally aligned to their ongoing development work. This alignment has come about because partners felt that DRR is proactive and strengthened their existing work that seeks to address underlying causes of vulnerability. DRR has provided an opportunity to explore urban work particularly in the inner city and informal settlements, with an emphasis on safer spaces for vulnerable groups in communities of young women and refugees. DRR has aligned strongly with work with women and refugee communities to address a range of rights issues, including DRR, and the rights to access water and sanitation. Consciousnessraising meetings have contributed to raising awareness about DRR as a rights issue. Local experiences and interpretations of this type of work have challenged international presumptions about what is DRR work.

Recommendations

There are a number of recommendations that can be made from this review. Each of these is described below with an emphasis as to whether it is ‘highly recommended’, ‘recommended’ or ‘recommended in time’.

Integration An emerging opportunity is for conscious reflection amongst OAU staff to interrogate and reflect more critically on the grassroots experiences of integration to understand the principles that might inform future work. This is not to develop a ‘blueprint’ of principles that can be used to inform all future programming but rather to allow project staff to reflect critically on what they have achieved over the past eighteen months and to build on this in future work. Project partners have emphasised that integration is a ‘natural’ process often restricted by donors, project design and reporting. Distilling such principles should not be to develop rules that restrict or limit programming.

This is recommended.

Social mobilisation

Having a multi-pronged approach that can be targeted at national level or within a particular community has proven effective. OAU should make this more explicit in its strategy to link organisations across a particular issue.

An example would be linking organisations prioritising food security at local level to national campaigns around food sovereignty.

This is highly recommended.

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Strengthen the national civil society platform Awethu! to build solidarity in confronting development challenges in South Africa. This is to partly address the fragmented nature of many civil society attempts to hold the state and private sector to account in the country.

This is highly recommended.

Gender

There continues to be a strong need to place women more centrally as both actors in development and as primary beneficiaries of OAU’s work. This reflects the abiding concern of the program that unless the structural roots of vulnerability are addressed, any change may be temporary and illusionary. This implies that all staff, partner organisations and projects should continue to review the gender dimensions of their work as a central tenant.

This is highly recommended.

Although women face a common multi-dimensionality of discrimination and vulnerability, there seem to be different forms of discrimination in the urban and rural context. This implies that a nuanced approach to specificity and location is often required particularly when designing programming with partners.

This is recommended.

Health

A two-pronged strategy is recommended to establish and demonstrate an effective system while simultaneously mobilising people and building partnerships to demand from government structures an adequate and functioning service at district and local level. This implies that OAU, with key partners such as TAC and Bela Bela, should codevelop a strategy that focuses explicitly on health outcomes. Such a strategy should build on existing work but seek linkages with other organisations working in this domain. Such linkages may support the establishment of a new civil society alliance that unites health unions, health activists and academia and which focuses demands on health worker employment and conditions.

This is highly recommended.

WASH

Training should continue to be integrated with a range of issues across partners and projects, all concretised and made explicit through interactive sessions, as this is proving to be an effective mechanism to address vulnerability in a holistic manner. WASH itself has an ‘integrative’ function. The work focused on nutrition and food security should have an explicit WASH component at the very least.

This is highly recommended.

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Food security and livelihoods

A key recommendation is to review and potentially challenge assumptions within the NDP, which has become the overarching development agenda for government.

This is recommended.

A challenge experienced by several partners focused primarily on food security work has been how to effectively engage with the different levels of government as there is little control over the terms of engagement.

A recommendation is to explicitly mobilise farmer associations to themselves advocate for the support government often fails to provide.

This is highly recommended.

Access to rights and social protection

The monitoring of service delivery by active, community-based civil society can be strengthened by social accountability mechanisms. The question arises whether No Longer Vulnerable can harness such opportunities to strengthen the rights program and help avoid one of the key risks to this area of work which relates to questions from those in authority about political affiliation.

This is recommended.

Disaster risk reduction

In many ways the DRR program exemplifies the notion of integration to address vulnerability, as rights-based initiatives have influenced and engaged more direct developmental processes to respond to community needs. A key recommendation is to consolidate and build new opportunities to push the boundaries of disaster preparedness and risk reduction.

This is recommended.

Vulnerability as a concept

OAU should prepare and publish a paper at the end of the program focused on what has been learnt about the notion of vulnerability. This will be a key learning as well as an important resource more generally.

This is recommended.

Integral framework

A key recommendation is for OAU to raise awareness of the integral framework, both internally and amongst partners, as a more explicit part of programming and strategy development.

This is highly recommended.

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Concluding comment

Since the advent of No Longer Vulnerable eighteen months ago, an increased sense of urgency has entered development debates in South Africa. The country continues to seek an economy that is bigger, stronger and better, that is more inclusive and equitable. Yet many warning bells are ringing about the economic trajectory.

Similarly, the political landscape continues to be troubled despite a successful democratic national election in May 2014. And although the NDP’s vision for 2030 is providing a common target for the country, increasing uncertainty about whether it can be translated into reality has emerged. As OAU has often argued, these are the questions with which all South Africans need to engage.

No Longer Vulnerable has provided such a space in its short lifespan. In some ways it has helped reshape public discourse where it works and enabled new forms of engagement that is not determined from the top. This is particularly true within the spaces created by partner organisations. This reflects the intention of the No Longer Vulnerable framework being designed specifically to identify how to deal with social issues through a bottom-up approach. In the remaining eighteen months, key questions remain about where people are in public debates, how they can hold technocrats and bureaucrats to account, and how policy that is deeply informed by the voices of the people on the ground can be developed. Finding and strengthening the capacity to elicit change for people themselves thus remains the key tenant and challenge of the program.

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Ernstson, H (2014) Stop calling me resilient. Comment on Tom Slater’s blog post ‘The resilience of neoliberal urbanism’, www.rhizomia.net, accessed 5 March 2014.

Folke, C (2006) Resilience: The emergence of a perspective for social-ecological systems analyses. Global Environmental Change 16: 253–267.

McAslan, A (2011) Community Resilience: Understanding the Concept and its Application. Discussion Paper.

Adelaide: Torrens Resilience Institute.

NPC (National Planning Commission) (2012) National Development Plan 2030. Pretoria: The Presidency.

Oxfam International (2011) Joint Country Analysis Strategy 2011 – 2015. Oxfam International.

Pasteur, K (2011) From Vulnerability to Resilience: A Framework for Analysis and Action to Build Community Resilience. Rugby: Warwickshire, Practical Action Publishing.

Rao, A and Kelleher, D (2005) Is There Life After Gender Mainstreaming? Gender at Work

Slater T (2014) The resilience of neoliberal urbanism, openDemocracy http://www.opendemocracy.net.

UNICEF/WHO (2012) Progress on drinking water and sanitation, 2012 update, New York, UNICEF; Geneva, World Health Organization, http://www.who.int/water_sanitation_health/publications/2012/jmp_report/en/

Von Holdt, K (2010) Nationalism, bureaucracy and the developmental state: the South African case. South African Review of Sociology Vol 41 No 1, pp 4-17.

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NO LONGER VULNERABLE MID-TERM REVIEW: SUMMARY OF FINDINGS AND RECOMMENDATIONS Summary of findings

Recommendations

1. Has the program progressed towards the intended objectives? What have been the major learnings emerging from the work implemented thus far? What areas of focus are emerging and what does this mean in terms of the strategy’s objectives?

Integration as a way of working • ‘Integration’ is happening across Oxfam’s work and emerging from the grassroots through careful community facilitation, social dialogue, diagnosis and learning.

• The multiple, overlapping issues facing communities cannot be addressed through silos. This might be a starting point for future programming.

• The approach has created opportunities at grassroots level for ‘integration’ to be tested in different ways, mostly emerging from an iterative approach as projects unfold.

• Diversity of partner organisations brings in new skills and approaches that contribute to the integration of programming, and creates new alliances and positive tensions.

• The integrated approach allows partners to ‘identify the links’ between factors underpinning social vulnerability and to prioritise these according to what particular beneficiaries articulate. This empowers partners, and, in turn, their beneficiaries and affected communities, to begin engaging the structural underpinnings of vulnerability such as holding local government to account for nondelivery and poor services.

• Promote opportunities for conscious reflection amongst Oxfam staff to interrogate and reflect on the grassroots experiences of ‘integration’ more critically to derive a set of principles that might inform future work.

• Use the established institutional arrangements that Oxfam has as a learning organisation at local level to stimulate experimentation, adaptation and learning.

Active citizenship • Examples of how active citizenship has facilitated change range from social dialogue and building accountability within communities to high-level advocacy campaigns.

• Having a multi-pronged approach that can be targeted at national level or within a particular community has proven effective. Oxfam has a clear role to make this more explicit in its strategy to link organisations across a particular issue.

• Several partners referred to Oxfam’s convening power to pull organisations together in regards to platforms like Awethu!

• Given that people are busy simply trying to survive in a very challenging environment, there is often not enough space for debate and dialogue. Oxfam needs to support different ways of creating dialogue within communities to build civil society.

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• Articulate a multi-pronged approach that can be targeted at national level or within a particular community to link organisations across a particular issue.

• Strengthen the national civil society platform Awethu! to build solidarity in confronting development challenges in South Africa and contribute to addressing the fragmented nature of many civil society attempts to hold the state and private sector to account.

Summary of findings

Recommendations

Gender • No Longer Vulnerable has a strong gender analysis. Work has been done internally with staff and externally with partners and other groups to develop the skills to recognise and respond to the need to place women more centrally as both actors in development and as primary beneficiaries of Oxfam’s work. This reflects the abiding concern of the program that unless the structural roots of vulnerability are addressed, any change may be temporary and illusionary.

• Given the vulnerability context which is characterised by increasing poverty and inequality but also gender inequalities and discrimination reinforced by socio-economic inequality, the goal to narrow inequalities as essential gendered work and provide women with the spaces to bring their own solutions, make their own choices and build solidarity, is pivotal for the ongoing work of the program.

• Gender work is largely embedded throughout Oxfam’s work. An important learning is that women’s empowerment is often the key to addressing vulnerability, which seems to be increasingly recognised across programming from WASH, food and nutrition security, and smallholder farming to disaster risk reduction and accessing services.

• The overarching strategy to empower women is through their participation in groups that build community solidarity to address social issues. Group interaction including sharing information builds trust and establishes alliances. It also develops the confidence of groups of women as their knowledge and experience can be validated.

• Continue to place women more centrally as both actors in development and primary beneficiaries of Oxfam’s work.

• Consider a nuanced approach to specificity and location to account for the different forms of discrimination in the urban and rural contexts for women.

Embracing contestation • Given the prevalence of contestation in South Africa – whether between communities and the state or within communities themselves – it is imperative that development practice engages with conflict and contestation as a means through which to address vulnerability. Oxfam has created participatory spaces to enable communities to express disagreements, contest power and outcomes, and reach decisions.

• Create participatory spaces to enable communities to express disagreements, contest power and outcomes, and reach decisions.

• Ensure these spaces are structured to expand dialogue and enable the emergence of new solutions to contribute to building the strength of a community.

• Understand the role of contestation in planning processes for better understanding of how to develop people’s capacity to build resilience through collective action.

Embracing community complexity • Development planning has a tendency to romanticise the coherence of communities and, in so doing, underestimate their complexity. This failure to recognise complexity often leads to inappropriate interventions and blowback from ‘beneficiaries’ as the needs of communities are not adequately addressed.

Oxfam programming, especially those in the urban context, has embraced this.

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• Ensure that the experiences of embracing community complexity are an explicit learning and are documented as such across the organisation.

Summary of findings

Recommendations

Health outcomes • A challenge facing partners working with health issues is that “local public health services seem to be deteriorating every day” with “no treatment available for infectious diseases, no vaccines for children and no antibiotics”. The overarching question emerging is how to effectively engage the public health system.

There are some useful lessons and examples of partner work (Treatment Action Campaign and Bela Bela) that can be drawn on and leveraged in future work.

• Design a two-pronged strategy to establish and demonstrate an effective system while simultaneously mobilising people and building partnerships to demand an adequate and functioning service at district and local level from government structures.

WASH • WASH training has been integrated with a range of issues, all concretised and made explicit through interactive sessions. Water safety issues were merged with topics such as sanitation and hygiene, HIV and AIDS, gender and disability. In reviewing what people had learned, there was clear interest and uptake amongst the participants particularly on topics of water safety and gender.

• Partners are increasingly integrating WASH and HIV-related services for increased impact. A central strategy has been to support learners with a greater understanding of hygiene and sanitation and its link to the disease burden, such as HIV and other sexual and reproductive health and rights issues. Another opportunity exists with linking WASH with food and nutrition security, as exemplified in the work of UNICEF and others.

• A key lesson emerging from this experience is that training on a specific issue can be used to identify a range of matters that require integration, if the challenges facing communities are to be addressed. This is particularly so if the training was informed by community participation.

• Explicitly integrate WASH training with a range of issues as this is proving to be an effective mechanism to address vulnerability in a holistic manner.

Food security and livelihoods • Through the integration of food security work with WASH, livelihoods work, HIV and DRR, partners have developed a stronger understanding of the interconnectedness of systems and processes, which has maximised the impact of their work on development-related issues.

• A challenge experienced by several partners focused primarily on food security work has been how to effectively engage with the different levels of government as there is little control over the terms of engagement. Opportunities may exist with the emerging policy on farmer support and extension and with linkages with broader Oxfam affiliates and strategy on food sovereignty.

• The NDP identifies agriculture as a primary economic activity in rural areas with the potential to create one million new jobs by 2030. However it is geared towards large-scale irrigation farming, fuel-based mechanisation, mono cropping, and export-oriented and agro-chemical industrial agriculture. In other words, the needs and priorities of small-scale farmers, especially women, are not emphasised; instead, the current industrialised, neoliberal, market-based model is preferred.

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• Support farmer associations to advocate directly for the support government often fails to provide.

• Support more explicit consciousness-raising in connection with livelihood work to bring people together to explore questions such as ‘why is our situation like this?’ and ‘what is our capacity to create change?’ to create more holistic strategies for addressing vulnerability.

• Review and potentially challenge assumptions within the NDP.

Summary of findings

Recommendations

Access to rights/social protection • Partners implemented increasingly complex strategies for campaigning around rights, advocating for justice and advancing the voices of minorities. These transcended different levels from national level processes such as the Traditional Courts Bill to attending ward committee meetings. Also more generally in terms of engaging government (across spheres) with varying degrees of success – from national level campaigns (TAC) to local economic development (FSG).

• Partner’s engagement of local politicians such as ward councillors often serves as an initial link between communities and local government. Risks exist that the issues raised may become politicised in a ‘party politics’ manner. Nonetheless, mobilised communities that hold local officials to account for the quality of service delivery see increased results in service quality to their communities.

• Linking the section on active citizenry with access to rights, the notion that citizens are not passive users of public services but active holders of fundamental rights can be strengthened.

Many NGOs operating in South Africa have developed and used social accountability mechanisms over the years including, for example, PACSA.

• Review whether No Longer Vulnerable can harness social accountability mechanisms to strengthen its work.

Disaster risk reduction • DRR has provided an opportunity to explore urban work particularly in the inner city and informal settlements, with an emphasis on safer spaces for vulnerable groups, such as young women and refugees, in communities. DRR has aligned strongly with work with women and refugee communities to address a range of rights issues, including disaster risk reduction, and the rights to access water and sanitation. Consciousness-raising meetings have contributed to raising awareness about DRR as a rights issue.

Local experiences and interpretations of this type of work have challenged international presumptions about what is DRR work.

• The DRR program exemplifies the notion of integration to address vulnerability, as rights-based initiatives have influenced and engaged more direct developmental processes to respond to community needs. Working with particular notions of vulnerability in refugee communities and with women in informal settlements, DRR has provided new opportunities to push the boundaries of disaster preparedness and risk reduction.

• The DRR program has influenced broader, regional work in rethinking more traditional concepts associated with disasters.

People migrating into urban areas are often forced to set up homes in shacks in marginal areas where there are few essential services, and they are extremely vulnerable to the impact of floods and fire. Finding community-based structures to acknowledge these issues and to advocate for government responses, the DRR program has reiterated the need to look beyond just the provision of facilities and support services to the physical environment and has highlighted women-specific risks.

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• Consolidate and build new opportunities to push the boundaries of disaster preparedness and risk reduction.

Summary of findings

Recommendations

2. As this program was intended as an integrated approach targeting vulnerability, how well has the program responded to this factor? Based on the work done thus far, has the program addressed vulnerability (as a focus) and, if not, what can be done going forward using vulnerability as the measure?

Unanticipated events, political change, personnel moves, physical and technological shifts, inter-program and intra-program interactions, practitioner learning, media coverage, organisational imperatives, performance management innovations and so on make programs permeable. The broadness of the thematic areas, and the nature of how Oxfam works in practice, means that there is flexibility and adaptability to address this reality. It also means that Oxfam is able to use this fluidity as an opportunity.

The notion of social vulnerability is key to Oxfam’s work and is valuable because it recognises that:

1. shocks and stresses are not necessarily environmental in nature but can also be the result of changes in the social, economic or political environment, such as illness, death, loss of employment or political conflict; 2. vulnerability is the sum total of factors in the socio-cultural, natural, physical, economic and political environment. In other words, it is multi- dimensional.

There has been some debate within Oxfam about the notion of resilience and whether No Longer Vulnerable is working towards this as an end result of programming. The idea is alluring, suggesting an ability to ‘bounce back’ from adversity and, possibly, even achieve a state that is better than the original one, prior to the misfortune.

There is, however, a danger in using the term uncritically, particularly if its interpretation is devoid of an understanding of power, agency and responsibility. Resilience theory fails to take adequate account of systemic factors that result in social vulnerability and undermine resilience, particularly how power, ecology and development intersect.

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• Prepare and publish at the end of the program a paper focused on what OAU has learnt about the notion of vulnerability as a key learning as well as an important resource generally.

Summary of findings

Recommendations

3. The framework has been aligned to the Rao and Kelleher’s ‘integral framework’ as the base of the theory of change.

How has this theory been internalised and used by program staff?

As seen from the complex context in which OAU works, facilitating change depends on working across multiple spheres. An explicit recognition of this is made in the ‘theory of change’ that lies at the heart of No Longer Vulnerable. This draws on Rao and Kelleher’s ‘integral framework’, which pivots on four quadrants: • individuals within communities (rights holders) holding local government (duty bearers) to account; • improved access to services; • effectiveness of governance through strengthened connection between rights holders and duty bearers; and • reduced inequalities through access of better services.

Although staff and partners intuitively recognise the integral framework, it is mostly not an explicit part of programming. Many partners believe a more conscious use of the framework would strengthen strategy. In particular, it can be used to identify what is missing to elicit change and what is in our power to change.

In instances where partners’ work does not coherently address the lower right quadrant (formal institutions – laws, policies and networks), partnerships can be established with advocacy and policy organisations. Similarly, a more explicit focus on the lower left quadrant can be used to emphasise a focus on gender and women’s empowerment. Essentially the framework helps view the whole system in which people are embedded. By working only in one sphere of this system, change will not be achieved.

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• Share learnings and raise awareness of the integral framework both internally and amongst partners as a more explicit part of programming and strategy development.

Title:

Mid-Term Review (July 2012 - December 2013) No Longer Vulnerable Program (July 2012 - July 2015)

Published: October 2014 Author:

Scott Drimie

Proofreader: Cheryl Goodenough Design:

LUMO design & illustration (www.lumo.co.za)

Copyright: Oxfam gives permission for excerpts from this book to be photocopied or reproduced

provided that the source is clearly and properly acknowledged.

Disclaimer: The views in this publication are those of the respective authors and do not necessarily represent

those of Oxfam or any funding agency. The interview and review process was participatory and

consent around content and inclusion of personal information was given to Oxfam by interviewees.

Contact Details: Oxfam

Suite 1B, Strathway Building

Strathmore Office Park

305 Musgrave Road

Durban, South Africa

+27 (0) 31 201 0865

infosouthafrica@oxfam.org.au

This Program Mid-Term Review was supported by the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade.

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idual Level

Women and men’s consciousness

Women and men’s access to resources

Norms and exclusionary practices

Formal institutions, laws & policies

Systemic Level

Formal

inFormal

v Indi